American veteran diplomats disconcerted after mass layoffs in the State Department

More than 1,300 employees were forced to leave the State Department on FridayLeaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old coffee cups and take decades of specialized skills and under-employment training as part of the diplomatic body of the United States.

The massive overhaul of the Federal Agency has been underway for months, the Trump administration informing the congress at the end of May that thousands of state employees will have lost their employment within the framework of the largest reorganization of the department for decades.

However, the details whose jobs would have been reduced have remained closely, and many were shocked to see that they were part of the reduction of 15% of the staff of domestic agencies. Several career employees who found themselves unexpectedly with pink briefs told NBC News that they had been asked to write speeches and prepare discussion points for people appointed politicians on critical issues a few days before.

“It is so difficult to work somewhere with your whole life and to be treated in this way,” a veteran official told NBC News with more than 30 years in the department. “I don’t know how you treat people this way. I really don’t do it. ”

As the termination opinions struck the reception boxes throughout the day, the employees could be seen cry in the courtyard and snuggle up in the corners in the corridors, like those who had been dismissed aligned by hand in their portable computers, their phones and their diplomatic passports.

“The way things have been done … They were not done with dignity. They were not respectfully done. They were not made transparent,” a licensed agent of the external service with NBC News Olga Bashbush told more than 20 years of experience.

A senior official of the State Department has Briefing Journalists on behalf of the agency before the Cups told journalists on Thursday that restructuring should be “individual agnostic”.

“It is the most complicated staff reorganization that the federal government has ever undertaken,” said the official. “And it was done to be very focused on finding functions that we want to eliminate or consolidate, rather than watching individuals.”

Michael Duffin, an employee of the public service of the department since 2013, spent nine years as a political advisor at the office of the fight against terrorism developing some of the first programs to counter white supremacy and other forms of violent extremism.

“No one in the State Department would disagree with the need for a reform, but arbitrarily dismiss people like me and others, whatever their performance, is not the right way to do so,” said Duffin as a closing lecturer during a rally outside the department on Friday evening.

A general opinion was sent to agents of the external service on Friday announcing the reduction of force. He declared that the ministry “rationalizes internal operations to focus on diplomatic priorities”.

“The reductions in efficiency have been carefully adapted to affect non -essential functions, duplicate or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiency can be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities,” said the opinion obtained by NBC News.

A website of the State Department has also been set up with a list of links and documents for employees concerned with categories such as “retirement sources” and a “federal retirement system for employees”, but several dismissed employees leaving the department on Friday expressed their confusion and frustration to NBC news on the lack of information available on the next stages.

“Yes, a notification of the congress has been sent, but the information that the employees received is literally nothing,” said Bashbush.

The agents of the external service impacted will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days, depending on the notice, while most civil servants will have 60 days before being officially terminated by their posts.

The blow

Friday afternoon late, hundreds of officials and officers of the external service whose number had not been called upon gathered in the hall before to “applaud” their less fortunate colleagues, in a tradition generally reserved for the honor of outgoing secretaries of state.

Diplomats that have boxes stacked on office chairs and beer grocery bags filled with books have wiped tears in the midst of echo applause and support cries that lasted almost two hours.

Bashbush said that solidarity and collegiality have filled her heart with gratitude and joy, and she thanked her colleagues for the extraordinary act.

“They applauded us,” said Bashbush. “Everyone came here in front of the main building of the State Department and celebrated the service of everyone and their pride in their country.”

The long lines of applause overturned in the footsteps of the building, where dozens of former career diplomats and politicians stood among other demonstrators with signs reading: “Thank you to the American diplomats.”

Democracy, human rights and work

“Our entire office is right … Party,” said a senior official of the public service at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Work in front of the department on Friday evening while licensed employees left the building. He spoke anonymously as one of the more than 1,500 employees of the State Department who chose to take a deferred retirement.

The employee described the devastation felt by his colleagues, one of whom is about to have a baby and another who provides the only income for their household.

“It’s just on the personal side. I’m not even talking about how it will disrupt foreign policy,” he said.

Within the framework of the new structure of the State Department, the DRL office will be considerably reduced and the few remaining offices will be placed under a new deputy secretary of democracy and Western values. One of the most acute changes will be the elimination of the many positions dedicated to human rights for different regions of the world.

“There are specialties. You had a manager who were experts in good governance and human rights and international labor affairs,” said DRL manager. “You cannot have a group of people who do not know the region trying to do a human rights policy for this specific region, because they will not get it and they will not plead it when more important problems come into play.”

Enrique Roig, former assistant secretary of the DRL office, said that he had accepted. Roig, who served in the Biden administration, was part of a handful of former democratic politicians speaking before the department while the diplomats were deposited.

“This will allow authoritarian authorities around the world, on the left and to the right, to continue to abuse civic space, in prison and to enclose journalists and civic activists and to increase the number of political prisoners that we see worldwide that my office helped to release,” said Roig.

Science and research

A group of women licensed from the Science and Cooperation Office of the State Department was released with t-shirts on their office clothes with the message: “Science is diplomacy. Diplomacy is science. ” The women cried and crowded out of the building in front of the gathered crowd. Their office is one of the more than 300 offices or offices eliminated or merged in the context of radical reorganization.

“What is clear is that the State Department does not care about science and research,” said one of the women, an external service agent who was dismissed from the office as part of the Cups.

She described the office as having some of the best emerging technology professionals “throughout the government, not only in the State Department”, and qualified the parody that talent would be lost.

“When it comes to supporting research, fundamental research, research that helps us to have things like iphones, heart stimulators, we have no expertise in this building at the moment because of the layoffs of our staff and other offices like ours,” she said, adding that they had just discovered those responsible who, they would take control of their important work. “It’s shocking, and it’s confusing that the government does not seem to worry about keeping this kind of expertise.”

“Diplomacy is not a short -term gain. It is a long -term gain,” said another licensed manager of the office, summarizing the damage caused by the cuts. “The links that we now establish in our youth are with officials who will one day be the world leaders. Now these links will be lost. “