bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, pp. 37–38
Excerpt from PASO submission to the Public Service Arbitration Board.
Unlike many of the larger and more heterogeneous bargaining units, Foreign Service officers share more than a contract in common. Membership in the Foreign Service Group constitutes a distinctive career in the public service.
Foreign Service Officers have a distinctive method of recruitment, The Foreign Service Examination is conducted by the Public Service Commission at universities across Canada every October and at all Canadian missions abroad. The examination is demanding and highly competitive. The most recent entrants into the Foreign Service were hired from among the 4,447 applicants who wrote the examination in the fall of 1982. Only 21, or less than half of one per cent of the applicants, were initially hired in the summer of 1983. (Nineteen more were hired in the course of 1985 from the same list to fill vacancies created by attrition. No examination was held in the fall of 1983 and to date no hiring has been done on the basis of the eligibility list from the October 1984 competition.)
This rigorous entry process creates a body of recruits that are notable in three respects; because the examination specifically targets university graduates across Canada and is administered world-wide, it attracts a much broader and internationally experienced pool of applications than competitions conducted only in Ottawa. As a result, many promising candidates are encouraged to write the Foreign Service exam who might not otherwise apply for any other federal government competition. Second, the Foreign Service is able to recruit a highly educated body of trainees. A bachelors degree is a minimum qualification; in practice many candidates have higher degrees. In the class of 1983, 57 per cent had second degree or better; a third of this group were lawyers. A further characteristic of Foreign Service recruits is that a significant percentage have studied abroad. Thirty-eight per cent of the class of 1983 have degrees from American or European universities. Third, the Foreign Service is attracting an older and increasingly experienced body of trainees.
Same Level Entrance
This method of recruitment also has several important implications for the career Foreign Service. First, all recruits hired through the examination enter the group at the same level, FS-1(D). Although the examination process tends to favour more mature candidates, once recruited all trainees start at the bottom, regardless of their age, education or job experience. Some credit is given in terms of starting salary for past experience, but even this differential is erased after trainees complete their probationary year and start at the bottom of the FS1 salary band. Given the increasing level of job experience and education of trainees, it is not uncommon for new recruits, particularly lawyers, to suffer a salary drop of more than $10,000 upon entering the FS Group. More importantly, new recruits receive no credit towards their ranking in the Foreign Service for their experience prior to entering the FS group. This attitude is carried to its logical extreme in the department’s policy as regards officers that resign after a period of service and later wish to re enter the group. They too must again undergo and pass the examination and then they re-enter as FS-1(D)s.
Second, there is no regular method of lateral entry into the group at a level higher than FS1(D). At certain times in the past there have been one-time-only competitions for lateral entry at the FS1 and 2 levels for the members of other bargaining units that work alongside FS officers in External Affairs and CIDA. The most recent exercise was when CIDA PMs were given the opportunity to compete for entry into the newly created development assistance FS stream. However apart from these occasional exercises (the most recent of which was prompted by the re-organization of External Affairs) the only method of entry is by the exam at the FS1(D) level. Thus the Department relies almost exclusively on recruiting new trainees to make up for losses due to attrition at higher levels.
A third characteristic of the recruitment process is that it is largely carried out by other Foreign Service Officers. Although the Public Service Commission administers the examination process, four out of the five members of each board are drawn from the ranks of rotational officers, usually at the FS-2 level. The questions asked in the oral part of the exam, particularly in the crucial role-playing tests, are designed by the Foreign Service officers on each board and are often drawn from their own personal experiences. Thus the FS group plays a major role in defining its own selection standards and in recruiting new officers into its ranks.
Another distinctive characteristic of life as a Foreign Service Officer is that there is a divorce between the assignment and promotion systems for the FS group. Unlike other bargaining units in which officers are promoted by competing for higher positions, Foreign Service Officers can be promoted without changing their job and can be assigned to a higher position without being promoted This follows from three features of the group: the rotational status of the officers; the freedom to under or over-fill FS positions; and the system of promotion to level rather than position. The implications of each of these features is as follows.
Rotationality is the central concept governing the assignment system for the FS group. Foreign Service Officers are expected to be fully rotational. Formally, this means that they are prepared to accept an assignment to any FS position in Canada or any one of our 121 posts overseas, with all the consequences for disruption of one’s personal life this implies. Foreign Service Officers are asked to sign a form upon entry into the group confirming their rotational status; this is reviewed annually on their appraisal reports. The very small number of officers who elect or are required to become non-rotational face severely diminished career prospects in a service in which full rotationality is the norm. In practice, FS jobs are classified as two, three, or four year assignments. Extensions or early reassignments are possible, but it is unusual for officers (except on temporary duty) to serve less than twelve months or more than five years in a given job.
Rotation Important
Canada has a rotational Foreign Service for two reasons. It is considered important for the professional development of officers that they alternate periodically between service in Canada and service abroad, and that they do not become too closely associated with service in one policy area or region of the world. The Department of External Affairs encourages specialization up to a point, but it expects its officers to be able to adapt to new policy areas and new postings. Accordingly, it has been a long standing practice in External Affairs to break up the pattern of officers’ assignments from time to time by cross-posting them, for example, from the Soviet Union to the Caribbean or from intelligence work to public affairs. A second reason for rotationality is the need to maintain a degree of equity in assignments. With over half of our missions in hardship posts, it is important to have the flexibility to keep positions in non-hardship posts open in order to have a means of rewarding officers willing to serve in hardship ones. The assignment system entails a constant process of compromise between officers’ personal interests and the department’s operational requirements. Rotationality ensures that in the end, some form of rough justice is seen to prevail.
The second feature mentioned in the department’s freedom to under or over-fill positions. (An under-filled position is one in which the officer who occupies it is classified at a lower rank than the position.) The FS group is divided into just two broad bands: FS I and 2 level. The ostensible reason for these broad bands is to facilitate rotationality – the broader the bands, the greater the scope for the department to assign officers to the appropriate jobs without being hampered by the need to achieve a close fit between officers’ classification and position. In fact, the assignment process is not even confined within the existing broad bands. Between the FS I and FS 2 bands there are 78 per cent more officers under-filling positions than over-filling them (123 versus 69) and between the FS 2 and EX I bands there are 364 per cent more officers under-filling than over-filling positions (65 versus 14). This means that the department maintains a significantly larger number of officers at a lower level than the number of positions they are required to fill.
The third feature that must be taken into account is the system of promotion to level. Unlike most other professional bargaining units in the public service, Foreign Service offices do not receive promotions by competing for jobs at a higher level. Instead, once they have served for four years at a given level they become eligible for promotion to the next level. For each of the four streams, the annual appraisals for every officer in the area of selection are reviewed by a promotion board, and all the officers are ranked on a promotion list. The department determines how many officers at each level in each stream can be promoted and, subject to appeal, that number of officers is promoted based on their rank from the top of each list. This system applies not only to the FS levels but to the rotational EX category in the department as well.
The rationale for this system of promotion follows from the dictates of rotationality. Given the large number of re-assignments every year in a rotational service, and that officers eligible for each assignment are found in nearly every one of our missions around the world, it would be almost impossible to hold competitions for each position. Instead, promotions are divorced from assignments. The department maintains the flexibility to staff positions with the appropriate officers, without being restricted by their rank, and boards review officers’ potential for promotion, without direct reference to the level of responsibility entailed by their current assignments. In fact, the annual appraisal forms used by promotion boards do not even indicate the classification of the job for which the employee is being appraised.
There are two extremely important consequences of this divorce between the assignment and promotions systems used for Foreign Service Officers. The first is that it enables the department to draw on the talents of junior officers to fill higher positions without having to compensate them accordingly in terms of acting pay or promotion. Junior officers are usually willing to fill these higher positions because the enriched job content gives them a better chance to demonstrate their potential for promotion. Over time, their chances for promotion probably are improved by filling positions at higher levels. However, given the large numbers of officers acting at higher levels and the small number of promotions, it has become routine for officers to be passed over for promotion to a level at which they are already performing. For example, in 1984 there were 123 FS Is filling FS 2 positions while only 22 FS 1s were promoted and 65 FS 2s filling EX I positions while only 12 FS 2s were promoted. Furthermore, not all of the officers promoted were among those filling positions at a higher level.
Promotion Constrained
The second important consequence is that the rate of promotion, even for the department’s most capable officers, is even more tightly constrained by the diminishing number of management level vacancies than existing in other bargaining units. Average rates of promotion have slowed drastically across government in the last five years, and the FS group is no exception. However, officers in other bargaining units at any level are still free to compete for the vacancies that occur in other departments where promotions are made to position. In External Affairs, where promotion to level prevails, there is a minimum period of four years before officers are even eligible for promotion and it is impossible for officers to jump more than one level at a time. In practice, the four year minimum is an ideal which in recent promotions almost no one has received. The disparity between the minimum time required and the rate at which promotions are actually achieved is even greater when one considers promotion to the EX I level. Thus the promotion to level system severely restricts the mobility of the most capable officers. It is not surprising that many of the Foreign Service Officers that have resigned in recent years have moved immediately to much higher positions in the public or private sectors.
In effect, Foreign Service Officers move along two career paths in the department. The first is the path of their assignments, which if they are capable leads over time to more challenging and responsible positions. The second is their path of promotions, which usually lags far behind. The result is a growing sense of frustration among the department’s best officers over the lack of recognition and the remuneration for the work they actually perform.
Since the appointment of Canada’s first overseas trade commissioners in 1899, the Canadian government has fostered the creation of a career Foreign Service. Many of the factors discussed above contribute to this notion: the highly competitive method of recruitment; the reluctance to admit lateral entries; the control over examination standards by members of the service; the expectation that fully rotational officers can serve anywhere; the restrictions on rapid promotion imposed by minimum times in grade; the requirement that officers be able to cover each other’s jobs; and, the acquisition of knowledge and refinement of inter-personal skills that comes from multiple assignments abroad. As a result, until now Canada has been able to draw upon the accumulated experience of a body of officers that identified closely with their own senior management and who have been committed to a career in the Foreign Service. Under-pinning this sense of dedication, however, has always been the expectation that even if higher salaries or faster promotions could be obtained elsewhere in the public service (not to mention the private sector) career Foreign Service Officers would receive adequate rewards. The erosion of the salary structure and benefits package for the FS group compared to other professionals threatens to seriously undermine this assumption. If left unchecked, the costs would be borne not only by those officers that choose to remain, but by the entire government of Canada that has up until now been able to rely on a career Foreign Service to help it survive in
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, pp. 37–38. Read the rest of this issue →
