A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Foreign Service is in crisis. That's the view of the American Foreign Service Association, which used to be the State Department's union. It lost its bargaining rights under the Trump administration and has not been able to push back against the cuts it says have left morale in ruins. Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: The American Foreign Service Association, or AFSA, surveyed more than 2,100 diplomats. Ninety-eight percent of them reported low morale, and 86% said the Trump administration's changes have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities around the globe. AFSA President John Dinkelman calls it a dire situation.
JOHN DINKELMAN: The diplomatic core of the United States feels the effects of what has been undertaken in the form of managing their workplace to the ground.
KELEMEN: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's been streamlining what he calls a bloated bureaucracy. Thousands of Foreign Service officers and civil servants lost their jobs when he dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. He then laid off another 1,300 State Department employees in July. Some of those people were told their final day would be this Friday, though Congress made clear that there shouldn't be layoffs while the government is operating under a continuing resolution. Dinkelman estimates that about a quarter of America's diplomatic service has been let go or taken buyouts.
DINKELMAN: That's a tremendous slash in firepower, in brain power.
KELEMEN: And he says the assignment process at the State Department is in shambles.
DINKELMAN: The mentality with which one bids on a position has not historically been, where can I go to assure that I'm not going to get canned in the next three to five years?
KELEMEN: But now, he says, diplomats are focused more on job security than on where their language and diplomatic skills could be useful for America.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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