bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 3–4
Members in Canada watching television on January 24 will almost certainly have tuned in to a late evenig CTV interview of Minister Clark by Doug Fisher. For those of you who missed it, it was an interesting session touching, variously, on Central America, US relations, the Commonwealth and South Africa and, most interestingly from a PAFSO perspective, the matter of political appointments and their potential role in the foreign service.
In opening the issue, Fisher referred to PAFSO’s concerns and to recent bout de papier coverage of the issue. Although he noted that the foreign service has traditionally been a takeoff point for distinguished careers elsewhere in government implying, presumably, that foreign service officers benefit from this — he correctly understood that our concern on political appointments was with the major increase in the numbers of such appointments. He also posed a wider public concern with what he referred to as the “sleeze” in some appointments.
Minister Clark responded positively and creatively to the questions, reflecting a very good understanding of our professional aspirations and of the particular concerns which PAFSO had expressed on the relative numbers of appointments and the need for representation of the highest quality overseas. He had worthwhile things to say about the value of a politician’s perspective in diplomacy and about his own experience in running the Department relative to the well publicized experiences of Flora MacDonald and Howard Green, Mr. Clark was particularly interesting in responding to Fisher’s point about the quality of appointments, where, after questioning whether the point even applied to the appointments made to the foreign service, he expressed surprise at how little the new power to bring appointees before a parliamentary committee had been used.
All told, the issue occupied nearly one-third of the interview, which may give some measure of its continuing currency on the political scene. Obviously that currency derives from many aspects beyond those which PAFSO has raised in its earlier press releases and press conference. But we can also take some comfort from the fact that the issue, including our concerns, is still alive and in the public eye. We are coming into another posting season, and I think that we are all hopeful that the continuing strength of the issue will be a powerful encouragement to the Government to take a considered approach, one which recognizes our professional aspirations in the narrow, career sense and even more in the broader sense of ensuring the best leadership and Canadian representation overseas which can be obtained.
Turning to the more mundane, the issue of overtime in the foreign service seems to have been very quiet since the new contract was signed. The Executive pursued the issue in the last negotiations because of a widespread concern over the long, rewarding but unrewarded hours which the Department often seems to expect as routine. We accepted, in the end, an approach which is soft in comparison with most in the public service, out of respect for the often peculiar conditions in which we work and in the interest of achieving a system which would be implemented and not shelved. The new system is very flexible and the Department by all appearances is prepared to honour and live with it. What is required is that members — YOU — make the system work by discussing the matter with their managers and esuring that their legitimate efforts are recognized. The responsibility and the rewards lie with you – we hope that you are exercising and receiving them.
PAFSO has done very well the past several years in respect of grievances carried through to the arbitration level. Most recently, you will all have received our notice that full payment of the dental plan by the employer is to be implemented as a result of a legal action against the Treasury Board by the Professional Institute of the Public Service, supported by a number of unions and associations, PAFSO included. The decision involved Treasury Board’s failure to increase certain allowances= most notably for PAFSO members the bilingualism bonus during the 6 and 5 period in the early 1980’s and is a significant one, since it involves both improvements to the plan and full payment in all future years. In another recent example, PAFSO succeeded in the Executive’s joint grievance of the Department’s failure to pay performance pay last April. That decision will not only set the tone for future negotiations but will also mean that while all members got back performance pay when the contract was settled, members overseas will eventually get backpay on the allowances which would have been paid on such pertormance pay for the period between April I and the October date of contract settlement. In about the same time period as the latter decision, a large number of members of the Aid Stream were receiving substantial cheques, averaging several thousand dollars, as the result of an arbitral award granting them pertormance pay which was not paid following their entry into the service in 1983.
There is an obvious satisfaction with these successes, in part because each success has meant a material gain for those affected and in part because most members, who feel vulnerable when doing something as obvious and public as filing a grievance, feel vindicated when they win. Beneath these surface reactions, there is also a sense of disappointment involved, because each grievance filed is a sign that our normal and preferred means of dealing with the Department have failed. There is in the foreign service a strong paternal sense, a sense that the Department will provide what is required and just and a sense that this will come automatically to those who serve well. The necessity to go to court to get what one is entitled to offends that sense of service and community.
Why should we have to fight to gain what our sense of service tells us we should be getting automatically? The answer is sometimes simple: whereas we tend to think of the Department as the source of all the elements governing or working lives, in fact much of what we get on the pay and benefits side comes from the Treasury Board. The Personnel Policy Branch at the Board are in a different world from our expectations of a professional service. They deal with all of the unions, with PAFSO as a tiny part of their overall mandate, are very conservative and rule-driven, particularly where money is involved, and have a finely honed sense of what will set a precedent for their overall responsibilities. The Department is also often responsible for decisions which lead us into grievances. The problem can be one of rules which have been allowed to become out of date or out of touch with conditions. It can also be the result of individuals, who sometimes forget, or slip up or decide issues in ways which can only be considered as personal or capricious. Sometimes a decision seems to result from a fear of making hard choices and sometimes to reflect a concern for the rules rather than for the people affected by them.
Whatever the cause, the net result is often that what seems fair to us may be viewed arbitrarily, capriciously or not at all. And if it is your ox which is being gored, you will have to decide whether you will take the chance of doing something about it. Do you do the unthinkable, by raising your head out of the mire and complaining, or do you follow tradition and take your lumps? The increasing answer in recent years has been to do the former, a trend which I believe should and does concern Departmental managers. It is too easy to belive that the trend is the result of a new generation of officers, with higher material expectations or a stronger tactical sense that a grievance will achieve more faster than a succession of elegantly drafted numbered letters. It is still easy, but somewhat more plausible that the problem lies in frustration, in the fact that hard times have reduced promotion rates and dashed career expectations.
The hardest explanation of all to accept is that the service itself may be in one of its occasional periods of crisis. Part of the argument for this is that foreign service terms and conditions are becoming out of synch with those of the larger Canadian society. The failure so far to meet the expectations or solve the problem of the working spouse and the dual income family is one important aspect of this. So too is the sense of many that foreign service wages no longer adequately reflect the professional effort and commitment of many in the service, even in comparison to other public service groups and much less in comparison to those outside the public service. There is an equal sense that the problem lies in the intangibles, in the job we do and in the conditions we do it under. For every member who is frustrated by slow rates of promotion, there are several who are concerned with what seem to be declining opportunities to do the serious analytical and policy work we all joined the service hoping to do. There seems a growing concern with management and professional standards in the Department and a frustration with spending long hours on often ephemeral work for no reward and scant recognition.
It is a long way from grievances over performance pay to a crisis in the foreign service, but I fear that the problems are only beginning to emerge. In the short term, we hear of them with rising frequency in the cafeteria and we see them in the grievances filed. In the medium term, I fear that they may also manifest themselves in an increase in attrition rates, as more officers, particularly in the junior ranks, find less in the service to overcome the hardships of rotationality. I would hope that I may be reading the signs incorrectly. But if I am not, I would also hope, for the sake of an honourable and worthwhile profession, that we, in PASO and in the Department, can put our best minds and our best intents to starting soon to define and to solve what is going wrong.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, pp. 3–4. Read the rest of this issue →
