More than 1,300 employees were forced to leave the State Department on Friday, leaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old mugs of coffee and taking them decades of specialized skills and training at work as part of the United States diplomatic corps.
The massive review of the Federal Agency has been in process for months, and the Trump administration informed Congress at the end of May that thousands of employees of the State Department would lose their jobs as part of the largest reorganization of the department in decades.
Even so, the details of whose works would be reduced closely, and many were surprised to discover that they were part of the 15% cut for the national agency staff. Several employees of his career who unexpectedly found pink slippery told NBC News to be asked to write speeches and prepare conversation points for the appointed politicians on critical issues only a few days before.
“It is very difficult to work somewhere in your life and then be treated in this way,” said a veteran official with more than 30 years working in the department to NBC News. “I don’t know how you treat people like this. I really don’t.”
As the termination notices reached the entrance trays throughout the day, employees could be seen crying in the patio and curled up in the corners in the halls, since those who had been fired were lined up by hand on their laptops, telephones and diplomatic passports.
“The way things were done … They did not do dignity. They were not respectfully done. They were not done transparently,” said Olga Bashbush, a foreign service officer dismissed with more than 20 years of experience, to NBC News.
A senior official official of the State Department on behalf of the agency before the cuts told journalists on Thursday that the restructuring intended to be “individual agnostic.”
“This is the reorganization of more complicated personnel that the federal government has undertaken,” said the official. “And it was done to be very focused on looking at the functions that we want to eliminate or consolidate, instead of looking at people.”
Michael Duffin, an employee of the civil service in the department since 2013, spent nine years as a policy advisor to the counterterrorism office developing some of the first programs to counteract white supremacy and other forms of violent extremism.
“No one in the State Department would not agree with the need for a reform, but arbitrarily designate people like me and others, regardless of their performance, it is not the right way to do so,” Duffin said as the final speaker in a rally outside the department on Friday night.
A general notice was sent to foreign service officers on Friday announcing force reduction. He said the department is “simplifying national operations to focus on diplomatic priorities.”
“Personnel reductions have been carefully adapted to affect non -basic functions, duplicate or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies can be found from the centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities,” said the notice obtained by NBC News.
A website of the State Department was also established with a list of links and documents for the employees affected with categories such as “Retirement Sources” and “Federal Employee Retirement System”, but several dismissed employees who leave the department on Friday expressed confusion and frustration to the NBC news about the lack of information available in the next steps.
“Yes, a notification of the Congress was sent, but the information that employees have received is literally nothing,” said Bashbush.
The affected foreign service officers will be placed on administrative license for 120 days, according to the notice, while most public officials will have 60 days before being formally fired from their positions.
The applaud
For Friday afternoon, hundreds of officials and officers of the foreign service whose numbers had not been called in the front lobby to “applaud” their less fortunate colleagues, in a tradition generally reserved to honor the secretaries of state that come out.
The diplomats carried boxes stacked in office chairs and supermarket bags full of books cleaned with tears in the middle of eco rounds of applause and support screams that lasted almost two hours.
Bashbush said that solidarity and collegiality filled their heart of gratitude and joy, and thanked his colleagues for the extraordinary act.
“They applauded us,” Bashbush said. “Everyone came here in front of the main state department building and celebrated the service of all and their pride in their country.”
The long lines of applause spread to the first step outside the building, where dozens of former professional and political diplomats were among other protesters with signs that said: “Thanks to the diplomats of the United States.”
Democracy, human rights and work
“Our entire office is simply … missing,” said a senior civil service officer from the Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in front of the department on Friday night when dismissed employees left the building. He spoke anonymously as one of the more than 1,500 employees of the State Department who have chosen to take deferred retirement.
The employee described the devastation his colleagues felt, including one that is about to have a baby and another that provides the only income for his home.
“That is just personal. I am not even talking about the way this will interrupt foreign policy,” he said.
According to the new structure of the State Department, the DRL office will be reduced considerably and the few remaining offices will be placed under a new deputy assistant secretary of democracy and Western values. One of the most acute changes will be the elimination of the many dedicated human rights positions for different regions of the world.
“There are specialties. You had a picture of people who were experts in good governance and human rights and international labor issues,” said Drl official. “You cannot have a group of people who do not know the region trying to make a human rights policy for that specific region, because they will not get it and will not advocate it when the most important problems enter into play.”
Enrique Roig, a former deputy secretary at the DRL office, said he agreed. Roig, who served in the Biden Administration, was one of the handles of former appointed Democratic politicians who spoke in front of the department when diplomats presented themselves.
“It will allow authoritarians from all over the world, both left and right, continue abusing civic space, jail and locking civic journalists and activists and increasing the number of political prisoners that we see throughout the world that my office was helping to free,” Roig said.
Science and research
A group of women farewell from the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation of the State Department came out with t -shirts on their office clothes with the message: “Science is diplomacy. Diplomacy is science.” The women cried and hugged as they left the building in front of the crowd gathered. Its office is one of the more than 300 offices or offices that are eliminated or merged under the wide reorganization.
“What is clear is that the State Department does not care about science and research,” said one of the women, a foreign service officer who was fired from the office as part of the cuts.
He described that the office had some of the best emerging technology professionals “throughout the government, not only in the State Department,” and called it a parody that talent would be lost.
“When it comes to supporting research, basic research, research that helps us to have things like iPhones, having pacemaker, we have no experience in this building at this time due to the dismissals of our staff and other offices like ours,” he said, and added that they had just discovered that the officials who thought they were taking their important work had also been fired. “It is shocking, and it is disconcerting that the government does not seem to worry about maintaining that type of experience.”
“Diplomacy is not a short -term gain. It is a long -term gain,” said office dismissed from the office, adding the damage caused by the cuts. “The connections we now make in our youth are with those officials who will be world leaders someday. Now those connections will be lost.”
