bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1988), pp. 8–9
by Ed Whitcomb
Throughout history mankind has devised ways to better his lot. Better organization. Better technology. Better education. Unfortunately, we are almost equally good at injuring ourselves by doing things like stiffling technology, fighting wars and setting false priorities.
One truth holds, however. What we achieve, we did ourselves. The failures and setbacks were due to someone else, or perhaps fate, climate, the gods or innate wickedness.
So it is with the foreign service. We, of course, produced our own Golden Age When Canadian diplomats strode the globe like colossi bringing peace to Europe, development to the Third World and brotherhood to all mankind. In sharp contrast, our more recent descent into stagnation, career frustration, lowly status and relative poverty is clearly caused by others. We all know the devils who did us wrong — a miserly Treasury Board, a blinkered Public Service Commission, too many uncaring managers.
This must surely be at least 95% correct. But our fate is now so sad, our prospects so dismal that perhaps it is time to examine the other 5%, the remote, distant chance that maybe, inadvertently, unwittingly, foolishly even we bear some responsibility for our decline into darkness. There is, indeed, just a faint possibility that we are our own worst enemies.
Unaccustomed as we are to thinking this way, the effort leads to some interesting possibilities. With few exceptions, the foreign service always attracted the best. With even fewer exceptions, it always attracted a particular breed. We may be cynical, but there are few amongst us who are not dedicated to promoting Canada, helping Canadians and building a better world. We are dedicated. We are ambitious. We work damned hard. That used to lead to promotions. Now it leads to staff shortages and inadequate pay.
Treasury Board does not care if a diplomat visits some injured Canadian in hospital on his own time. TB does not care if a diplomat entertains until midnight lining up crucial support, smoothing the way for a visit, cultivating a market or gathering political intelligence. TB does not know how hard we work because we have never told them.
TB is concerned with running the government machine, with output, costs and organization. All organizations are essentially the same in that they have workers, supervisors and a product, and it doesn’t matter if the product is cars, transportation, insurance policies or diplomatic reports.
Much fuzzy thinking results when people develop the illusion that their product is special so their organization is “not like the others”. We seem to have mastered this line of argument by tirelessly telling ourselves that we are professionals. That is true, but why has it led to the conclusion that we should tolerate low wages, inadequate promotions, inadequate merit pay, that overtime is something professionals do automatically, and that demanding an hour’s pay for an hour’s work is unprofessional?
Fuzzy thinking can sometimes be corrected by analogy. Think of External Affairs as a plantation, with all of us out picking cotton, in a professional way, of course. Because we are professionals, we keep picking cotton long into the evening, indeed as long as there is cotton to be picked because we like the work, because it is important, because our masters want us to, and because, as in the old days, someday we may get rewarded for a job well done.
The people who pay our bills and sell the cotton (TB) must be absolutely delighted with this plantation. There we are, 1200 of the most highly-trained, dedicated slaves in the country, working away from dawn to dusk, singing happy tunes to ourselves, staying in the fields past dinnertime without anyone even asking us to, meekly asking once a year for a small raise so we don’t grow much poorer. Some of us even use our weekends travelling to distant plantations without dreaming of requesting compensation.
Does anyone expect TB to call us in from the fields at 5 p.m. and tell us to go home to our families? Does anyone expect TB to say “My they work hard in that plantation. Let’s give them a big bonus?” Do we and our managers really expect TB to authorize another 300 PY’s when the 1200 of us are willingly doing the work of 1500?
This is not an absurd analogy. Why would any organization hire more people or pay its employees more if the employees themselves are willing to work overtime for nothing? Let’s join the real world and realize that the more we work for less, the less incentive TB has to pay us more. That is the hole we have dug for ourselves, and the harder we dig the deeper the hole becomes.
Is this a shockingly, disgustingly unprofessional attitude? Not at all. The demands made of the foreign service by the public and our political masters grow exponentially. In working long hours for decades, we have conditioned our masters, our government and our clients to expect more for less. The rewards we once got for hard work have all but disappeared. And we have reached the point where the quality of our service is going to decline because we lack energy, enthusiasm and resources and have reached the limits of personal and family sacrifice. That, patently, is not a professional way to provide an essential service.
Fortunately one solution to this quandry was created in the last FS contract. It now says we can claim overtime for overtime on weekdays. We are supposed to take that as leave, but if leave is not possible, it must be paid in cash. If the Department is right about PY shortages, overtime cannot be paid with time off because we are too short of staff. To a large extent, then, overtime must be paid in cash.
That means we can demand and get paid for the amount of time it takes to do the job – 50 hours pay for 50 hours work, 60 for 60. Those working necessary overtime will start getting the weekly wage that was previously denied them, and the increase could be much more than promotion or merit pay could have provided. (Just one hour of overtime each week of the year is worth about as much for most officers as our last pay raise.) That in no way is compensation for merit pay or promotion — it’s honest pay for honest work. But money is money and it would be nice to take a bit more home, especially if you don’t get home till 8 or 10 p.m.
Other advantages will flow the day all FSOs begin claiming for all overtime worked. Over the years some of us have developed some rather inefficient work habits like the excessive redrafting of material, the leisurely approach to meetings and duplication of effort. They result from an open-ended attitude towards time. The day managers realize they will have to pay, explain and justify overtime is the day they will decide that another draft isn’t really necessary, that they already have enough information, that a meeting could move along a bit quicker and that perhaps only one person need attend some event. Nothing would do more for morale than the elimination of the bottom 5 – 10% of our work that is really unnecessary.
More important is the effect on PYs. Any manager who claims he is short a PY should now be signing overtime slips for 37 1/2 hours a week. If not, where is the evidence he and the Department are short of staff? (He may also be guilty of exploiting his staff because anyone who is encouraged or forced to work an extra 10 hours for nothing has seen his hourly wage (his worth) fall by perhaps a third). And, of course, some managers are approving all overtime, which means they have a case within the Department for the transfer of resources from bureaux which have no proof overtime is being worked.
When TB starts paying these sums then and only then will we get new PYs, because a full-time FSI costs less than half of an FS2 on weekend overtime. All that is needed is for managers, in their own interests, to ensure all overtime worked was necessary and is accounted for, and for ESOs to insist on overtime for overtime.
Then the Department will get the resources it needs, and with more resources (growth) promotions will become possible and necessary. We will also start edging back to the professional level of service that was once our pride, the level demanded by the nature of our work. There may still be people out there doing us harm, but at least the main enemy will no longer be ourselves.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1988), pp. 8–9. Read the rest of this issue →
