Category Archives: Retirement

US Amb. to Ethiopia Geeta Pasi to Retire, Amb. Tracey Ann Jacobson to be CDA

February 1, 2022 By in AF |Africa, Ambassadors, Appointments, chargé d’affaires, FSOs, Hotspots, Retirement, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , ,

 

The State Department just announced that the US Ambassador to Ethiopia Geeta Pasi “plans to retire to pursue other opportunities.” Foggy Bottom has appointed Ambassador Tracey Ann Jacobson, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Career Minister, to serve as Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, at the Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Ambassador Pasi was nominated ambassador in June 2020. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 22, 2020.
The official statement says “The Department of State expresses its great appreciation to Ambassador Pasi, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Career Minister, for her distinguished public service in advancing the values and interests of the United States around the globe, a career marked by three ambassadorial assignments and senior State Department leadership positions in Washington, D.C. We are particularly grateful for her stewardship of Embassy Addis Ababa during an exceptionally complex period.”
Ambassador Jacobson retired from the State Department in 2017. She was most recently appointed as Afghanistan Task Force Director in July 2021 during the Department’s Operation Allies Refuge.

 

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Modernizing @StateDept Workforce and Winning Talent – See What’s Glaringly Missing?

January 27, 2022 By in Americans Abroad, Blinken, Diplomatic Life, Foreign Service, FSOs, Huh? News, Leadership and Management, Realities of the FS, Retirement, Spouses, State Department, Trends Tags: , , , , , ,

 

On January 25, DipNote posted a new piece by Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon on Modernizing Our Workforce and Winning the Competition for Talent. He talked about recruiting the next generation, focusing on retention and building critical skills for the State Department. Excerpt below:

Recruiting the Next Generation

      • Our Recruitment Division conducted more than 3,000 recruiting activities, including over 900 events specifically targeting DEIA prospects. These DEIA-focused recruiting events engaged over 15,000 individual prospects.
      • We established a 500-person Volunteer Recruiter Corps with representation from all affinity groups, which participated in more than 150 events. These groups mirror the makeup of our workforce and help strengthen and support its diversity.
      • We streamlined the security clearance review process, reducing the average time it takes to finalize a clearance for new and transferring employees.
      • Looking ahead, we will continue to urge Congress to authorize and fund paid internships.

A Focus on Retention

      • We are focusing on creating and sustaining workplace flexibilities, to support our people and their families, modernize our performance management system, and promote professional development and career mobility for all our employees. In the last year, we have:
      • Expanded remote work and telework eligibility. The Department needs to keep pace with the private sector in enabling greater flexibility, and we are committed to enhancing and institutionalizing many of the changes we have implemented in response to the pandemic.
      • Expanded student loan repayment eligibility criteria.
      • Established the first Veterans Services Coordinator position, to better support our more than 5,000 veterans at the Department.
      • Created a Retention Team. In addition to reviewing the data and talking with the workforce to understand why people stay and why they leave, the Retention Team will develop the first Department-wide retention strategy.
      • These steps are important and are intended to support positive change across the Department. But we are not finished. In early 2022, in addition to announcing performance management reforms, we expect to roll out new professional development opportunities as well as long overdue initiatives aimed at helping our Civil Service employees build rewarding careers.

Building Critical Skills

      • As we reorient U.S. foreign policy to focus on 21st-century challenges that most directly affect Americans’ lives, we need to build our capacity and expertise in areas critical to our national security. To that end, we have:
      • Established a Talent Sourcing Unit to more effectively identify, reach, and target individuals for recruitment, especially in fields requiring specialized skills.
      • Conducted our first Department-only career fair, focused on STEM-and engaging diverse candidates.
      • Established new Foreign Service climate diplomacy positions in all geographic regions and key overseas missions and embassies.
      • Eliminated degree requirements for Foreign Service IT specialists and hired for several Civil Service data scientist positions.
It is shocking to see that this new modernization plan does not even mention family members anywhere.  Take a look at the following numbers:
Out of 11,840 total adult family members overseas, 75% (8,838) are female and 25% (3,002) are male.
Only 40% (4,761) adult family members are employed, while 60% (7,079) are not employed.  Of the 40% employed, only 24% or 2,900 worked for Uncle Sam inside our embassies and consulates while 16% (1,861) worked outside the US missions performing telework, running home businesses, or working in the education field.
According to BLS, the percentage of dual-income households in the United States was fairly stable between 1998 and 2017, ranging from 52 to 58 percent.
That’s not the case for FS households overseas. 
60% of FS adult family members overseas are unemployed. While unemployed, a good number are most likely not contributing to a retirement system. Sporadic and employment gaps while overseas could translate into a retirement wage gap; the same gap that helps push up the poverty rate for older women in this country.
We think that’s an important point to note since 75% of FS spouses overseas are female.
Something else to note when looking at these numbers.  In 2020, the average life expectancy of women at birth in the US was 80.5 years; 75.1 years for men.
So on average,  female FS spouses with chequered careers and with less retirement security than their regularly employed spouses are expected to live five years longer than their male spouses. According to WISER, the average annual Social Security benefit received by women age 65 and older is approximately $14,000, which is unlikely to cover all retirement expenses.
Would the female spouses in a modern State Department continue to give 20-30 years of their lives to life overseas as accompanying partners, only able to work now and then, and putting their financial future in their old age in great peril? How many employee-spouses would opt to leave mid-careers to give their accompanying spouses opportunities to pursue their own careers and build financial independence?
Also read: WISER: Retirement Planning for Stay-At-Home Moms

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EEOC: Challenge to @StateDept’s Mandatory Retirement as Violation of the ADEA Fails

June 3, 2021 By in EEOC, Govt Documents, Realities of the FS, Retirement, State Department Tags: , , , ,
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Via EEOC Appeal No. 2020000116 (PDF)
DECISION:

Complainant filed a timely appeal with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) from the Agency’s decision dated July 31, 2019, dismissing his complaint of unlawful employment discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq.

BACKGROUND:

At the time of events giving rise to this complaint, Complainant worked as an Information Systems Security Officer, FS-03, at the Agency’s facility in Brussels, Belgium.

On July 1, 2019, Complainant filed a formal complaint alleging that the Agency subjected him to age discrimination when he was not allowed to bid for assignments in the summer 2020 job cycle, when he will reach the Agency’s mandatory retirement age. Complainant also stated, in his formal complaint, that he was being involuntarily retired in January 2020, solely on account of his age.

The Agency dismissed the complaint, pursuant to 29 C.F.R. § 1614.107(a)(1), for failure to state a claim, stating that the ADEA does not preclude mandatory retirement provisions, including the one set forth in the Foreign Service Act which covered Complainant’s position. The instant appeal followed.
[…]
We concur that the instant complaint, which in essence challenges the Agency’s mandatory retirement at age 65 as a violation of the ADEA, fails to state a claim. Since Complainant is challenging the validity of the mandatory retirement age, which was authorized by Congress as a statutory exception to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Commission finds that his complaint has been appropriately dismissed for failure to state a claim. See Brumbaugh v. Department of the Army, EEOC Appeal No. 01A05531 (Mar. 29, 2001) (the mandatory retirement provisions of the Foreign Service Act must be given “full force and effect” and the ADEA cannot be read to prohibit their implementation, citing to Strawberry v. Department of State, No. 96-5221 (D.C. Cir. 1997. In commenting on Strawberry, the Commission observed that the court looked at both statutes and concluded that Congress knew what it was doing in keeping the mandatory retirement provisions in place even when it otherwise outlawed mandatory retirement for most employers under the ADEA).

Accordingly, the Agency’s final decision dismissing Complainant’s complaint is AFFIRMED.

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Do you know the statutory definition of “widow” for benefit purposes?

March 26, 2021 By in Career Employees, Compensation and Benefits, Court Cases, Federal Agencies, Learning, Regulations, Retirement Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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Gibson v. Office of Personnel Management, No. 2020-1651 (Fed. Cir. September 9, 2020) (MSPB Docket No. PH-0831-20-0011-I-1): The appellant sought survivor annuity benefits under the Civil Service Retirement System, contending that she is a “widow” of a retired Federal employee. OPM denied the appellant’s application for benefits, finding that she did not meet the statutory definition of “widow” for benefit purposes under 5 U.S.C. § 8341(a)(1)(A), because the marriage to her husband lasted from May 21, 2018, until his death on February 15, 2019 (270 days). This was short of the “at least 9 months” requirement. On appeal, the Board affirmed OPM’s determination. Before the Federal Circuit, the appellant contested the application of the term “months” and argued that each month should be counted as having 30 days, meaning her 270-day marriage was 9 months in duration. The court rejected this argument and affirmed the Board’s final decision. Citing Supreme Court precedent as support, the court concluded that the phrase “9 months” has an “ordinary public meaning” that counts time as calendar months. The court further explained that Congress often uses, including in the statute at issue, “days” as a unit of measurement and could have done so in 5U.S.C. § 8341(a)(1)(A) if that were its intention. The appellant presented no grounds for “erasing the clear distinction between familiar counting methods.”

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/20-1651.OPINION.9-9-2020_1649543.pdf

 

 

 

UK Foreign Office’s Most Photogenic Member Palmerston to Retire as Chief Mouser

August 10, 2020 By in Celebrity, Retirement, UK-FCO Tags: , , , , , ,
On August 6, the FCO’s Chief Mouser announced that the time has come for him to retire and spend time away from the limelight. Although Palmerston did not write a valedictory despatch, he did have a nice farewell letter complete with paw marks.
This announcement comes following a report that his boss, the Foreign Office’s Permanent Under Secretary Sir Simon McDonald is also set to retire early after “the prime minister signaled he wanted someone new to head the ministry when it merges with the Department for International Development”, according to Sky News.
Farewell @DiploMog, may you enjoy your best life yet in the countryside.
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SCA Acting Asst Secretary Alice Wells to Retire After 31 Years of Service

May 11, 2020 By in Acting Capacity, Ambassadors, assistant secretaries, Foreign Service, FSOs, Regional Bureaus, Retirement, SCA | South Central Asia, State Department Tags: , ,

 

Retired Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Receives Georgetown Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy

February 13, 2020 By in Ambassadors, Awards, Foreign Service, FSOs, Retirement, Video of the Week Tags: , , ,

 

On February 12, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch (Ret) receives the 2020 J. Raymond “Jit” Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy at Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Previous Trainor awardees include , , and .
Amb. Thomas Pickering formally introduced Amb. Yovanovitch and discussion moderator Amb. William Burns, President of . See video of her lecture below:

Must Read: Divorce and Foreign Service Retirement Benefits

June 26, 2019 By in Foreign Service, Reading Tips, Realities of the FS, Regulations, Retirement, Spouses, State Department Tags: , , , ,

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Via UNCLASSIFIED CABLE: 19 STATE 53266 Date/DTG: May 20, 2019 / 201659Z MAY 19 available via afsa.org:

1. Divorce can impact the division of Foreign Service retirement benefits. This message from the Bureau of Human Resources Office of Retirement outlines the key rules that apply under the Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System (FSRDS) and the Foreign Service Pension System (FSPS).

2. Please note that the guidance outlined in this message does not apply to Civil Service employees. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reviews and administers civil service court-ordered benefits. For more information, Civil Service employees should download Pamphlet RI 84-1 titled “Court Ordered Benefits for Former Spouses” from OPM’s website (https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/publications-forms/pamphlets/ri84-1.pdf) or view OPM’s presentation on Court Ordered Benefits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZIaRfUtQB4).

Default Statutory Entitlement

3. The Foreign Service Act provides a statutory entitlement, also referred to as a default entitlement, when a former spouse is a qualified former spouse. A former spouse is a qualified former spouse if the following criteria are met: a) was married to a Foreign Service retirement plan participant for at least 10 years of his/her creditable federal service, b) at least 5 of those 10 years occurred while the participant was a member of the Foreign Service, and c) the former spouse must not have remarried prior to the commencement of any benefits and while under the age of 55 (age 60 for remarriages prior to November 8, 1984, for benefits under FSRDS). If the above criteria are met, and the former spouse is qualified, the statutory default entitlement applies regardless of the employee’s wishes, unless a spousal agreement or court order otherwise governs the disposition of benefits.

4. Under the default statutory entitlement, a qualified former spouse is entitled to a pro rata (marital) share of 50 percent of the employee’s annuity and a pro rata share of the maximum survivor benefit. The pro rata share is a fraction: the numerator is the total length of time of marriage during which the annuity was earned and the denominator is the retiree’s total creditable service. For example, if a couple was married for 14 years during the participant’s creditable service and the participant retired with 20 years of creditable service, then the pro rata share would be 14/20, or 70 percent. The former spouse would therefore receive 35 percent of the participant’s retired pay (which is half of the 70 percent pro rata share) while the participant would receive the remaining 65 percent.

Deviating From Statutory Entitlement

5. The Foreign Service default statutory entitlement may be altered through a valid court order or notarized spousal agreement. For example, a valid court order or spousal agreement can provide an express waiver of the former spouse’s statutory entitlement or provide that the former spouse’s entitlement be based on a different calculation method than the default calculation provided for by statute. Additionally, a valid court order or spousal agreement can award benefits even if the former spouse was not married to the retiree during his/her creditable Foreign Service or even if the marriage lasted fewer than 10 years. For a court order to be given effect for a former spouse, the order must be issued within two years of any divorce or annulment becoming final.

6. Any spousal agreement or court order that claims to alter or waive retirement benefits that are due under the Foreign Service Act to a former spouse must do so expressly in order for the alteration or waiver to be effective. To expressly waive or alter benefits under the Foreign Service Act, any spousal agreement or court order must specifically refer to Foreign Service retirement benefits. Merely mentioning generic retirement benefits or erroneously referring to retirement benefits under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) or the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) is insufficient to constitute a valid waiver or alteration of benefits. For example, to constitute an express waiver or alteration, the parties may specify that the relevant language in the agreement or order pertains to survivor annuities or pensions under the Foreign Service Act, under the Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System if the annuitant is a FSRDS participant, or under the Foreign Service Pension System if the annuitant is a FSPS participant.

7. In cases where the Department determines that a spousal agreement or court order language is insufficient, the parties may negotiate a new agreement or, in certain circumstances, return to court to correct the problem. A notarized spousal agreement may change the amount of the pension paid to the former spouse at any time. A court order can adjust the amount of a survivor annuity to a former spouse provided it is issued before the death of an employee/annuitant.

Submit Your Divorce Documents For Review

8. Foreign Service members must submit all relevant divorce documentation to the Bureau of Human Resources Office of Retirement (HR/RET) prior to retirement. HR/RET strongly encourages employees to do so prior to, or at the time of divorce, or no later than one year before retirement. In cases where years have passed since the divorce, it sometimes takes time to locate the former spouse. In other cases, state court orders may fail to meet federal standards or one party contends that the order has a different meaning than the Department’s interpretation. Thus, the parties sometimes must return to court to correct the problem. That process can take time.

9. To check in advance for such problems, Foreign Service employees should e-mail a certified copy of the entire court order and all attachments to the HR Service Center at HRSC@state.gov or e-mail that address asking for mailing instructions. HR/RET will review the documentation and provide the employee and their former spouse with a divorce determination letter addressing what, if any, retirement benefits a former spouse is entitled to.

Changes In Marital Status After Retirement

10. Foreign Service annuitants (retirees, their survivors, and former spouses) must report all changes in marital status (divorce, marriage/remarriage, or death of spouse) by notifying the HR Service Center and providing the relevant documentation.

11. Delays by annuitants in reporting a marriage/remarriage occurring after the participant’s retirement can permanently prevent a survivor election. A retiree who remarries after retirement has a limited period of time within which they may be eligible to make a survivor election for the new spouse. Under FSRDS, a retiree has only one year from the date of marriage/remarriage to elect a survivor annuity for a spouse acquired after retirement. For a FSPS retiree, there is a two-year deadline. When deciding whether to make a survivor election for a spouse acquired after retirement, it is important to consider that in order to remain eligible for FEHB benefits, a retiree’s surviving spouse must be eligible to receive a survivor annuity(whether or not the annuity would be payable in whole or in part to a former spouse).

For More Information

12. We understand this short message cannot address every conceivable situation. Therefore, additional questions may be sent to HRSC@state.gov.

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EUR’s Wess Mitchell Quits, New Acting EUR A/S Millard Reportedly to Retire 2/22

January 29, 2019 By in assistant secretaries, EUR|Europe, Foreign Service, FSOs, Political Appointees, Resignations, Retirement, State Department, Top Ranks, Trends Tags: , ,

Posted: 1:57 am EST

Big news last week was the soon to be departure of EUR’s Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell who is leaving his post after some 15 months on the job. A/S Mitchell took office in October 2017 and is resigning from his appointment effective February 15. The State Department announced that the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) Elisabeth Millard will serve as Acting A/S for the European and Eurasian Affairs. We’re not sure how long she will be in that acting capacity as we understand that her paperwork has been submitted to retire on February 22. The bureau appears to have six career DASes, two special envoys (one career, one noncareer), and one vacancy (Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia  – is this a newly created position?). In any case, let us know when you know who will be the next Acting A/S.

@StateDeptPM’s Tina Kaidanow Heads to DOD as Director of International Cooperation

September 21, 2018 By in Ambassadors, Appointments, Defense Department, Follow the Money, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Assistance, Foreign Policy, FSOs, Retirement, State Department, Top Ranks, Trends, Trump Tags: , , , , ,

 

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