Like most of you who work for the foreign affairs department of the Washingtion DC area's largest employer, I lost a few collegues in the RIF. Unlike some of you, I didn't get a chance to say goodbye before COB Friday came and we were scattered.
That was a rough way to end an association that, in most cases, went back a decade or longer. Best wishes to them all, and I hope I can at least provide them with job contacts, recommendations, and be a reference for clearance interviews.
My good friends in Overseas Buildings Operations had it much worse, losing half the Area Management Officers, a large part of Real Estate, and some senior key leaders. That will hurt.
Of the many news stories I saw about the RIF, this one stood out as being more reflective than most and also addressing the procedure by which the staff cuts were planned:
Veteran U.S. diplomats baffled after mass layoffs at State Department.
More than 1,300 employees were forced out of the State Department on Friday, leaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old coffee mugs and taking with them decades of specialized skills and on-the-job training as part of the United States diplomatic corps
The massive overhaul of the federal agency has been in the works for months, with the Trump administration informing Congress in late May that thousands of State Department employees would lose their jobs as part of the largest reorganization of the department in decades.
Still, the details of whose jobs would be cut remained closely held, and many were shocked to find they were a part of the 15% cut to domestic agency staff. Several career employees who unexpectedly found themselves with pink slips told NBC News they were asked to write speeches and prepare talking points for political appointees on critical issues just days before.
“It’s so hard to work somewhere your entire life and then get treated this way,” one veteran civil servant with more than 30 years working at the department told NBC News. “I don’t know how you treat people this way. I really don’t.”
As the termination notices hit inboxes throughout the day, employees could be seen crying in the courtyard and huddling in corners in the hallways, as those who had been laid off lined up to hand in their laptops, phones and diplomatic passports.
“The manner in which things were done … they were not done with dignity. They were not done respectfully. They were not done transparently,” Olga Bashbush, a laid-off foreign service officer with more than 20 years of experience, told NBC News.
A senior State Department official briefing reporters on behalf of the agency ahead of the cuts told reporters Thursday that the restructuring was intended to be “individual agnostic.”
“This is the most complicated personnel reorganization that the federal government has ever undertaken,” the official said. “And it was done so in order to be very focused on looking at the functions that we want to eliminate or consolidate, rather than looking at individuals.”
All true! The planning was certaintly not done transparently. In fact, it was closely held for several months, which says something about the insularity and group loyalty of those at the top. After all, this is the second time around the Department for the Trump administration, and apparently they learned some lessons from the first time.
Also true that the layoffs were targeted at offices and functions that conflicted with Trump administration policies. On the day of the RIF nobody was in the mood to take a disinterested view of the matter, however, it is important to avoid delusion, especially self-delusion.
The Trumpening was never going to fight its own government apparatus on issues such as immigration and refugees. There was a fundamentally political disagreement between the White House and some of the functions that were eliminated, and that can only end one way.
Vox populi, after all. The pendulum keeps swinging. Every four years comes a new election. Sometimes the stars align.
Meanwhile, we can try to show some human sympathy for the victims this time, and remember that it can just as easily be you and your friends next time.
