By Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The American Foreign Service Association urged the State Department on Wednesday to not go ahead with a planned overhaul that likely would see around 2,000 layoffs of personnel, saying it should abide by a federal court that prohibits federal agencies from implementing mass firings.
The department has prepared to start sending hundreds of reduction-in-force notices to its domestic workforce as early as Friday, sources familiar with the plan said, but a final decision on the timing is yet to be taken. Ongoing litigation may well delay that timeline.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court can weigh in anytime on the administration’s bid to halt the judicial order blocking mass job cuts.
“Sources inside the department tell us that layoffs will be announced as soon as the end of this week or early next week,” AFSA President Tom Yazdgerdi said in a statement.
“Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, the department is legally barred from taking any action outlined in its reorganization plans,” Yazdgerdi said.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In late May, the administration notified Congress of a major plan to overhaul its diplomatic corps that will cut thousands of jobs including hundreds of members of its elite U.S. Foreign Service who advocate for U.S. interests in the face of growing assertiveness from adversaries such as China and Russia.
The reorganization was set to be largely concluded by July 1, officials said at the time.
Initial plans to send the notices earlier this month were put on hold after a federal judge in California on June 13 temporarily blocked the U.S. State Department from implementing the reorganization plan.
U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Alexander Resar said that the State Department would not issue layoff notices that were scheduled to go out on June 14.
The shake-up comes as part of an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump to shrink the federal bureaucracy, cut what he says is wasteful spending of American taxpayer money and align what remains with his “America First” priorities.
According to the plan shared with Congress in late May, the Department is expected to cut U.S.-based civil service and foreign service officers from the domestic workforce by 3,448 people, out of 18,780 people employed as of May 4.
More than 300 of the department’s 734 bureaus and offices will be streamlined, merged or eliminated. More than 2,000 employees will be subject to job cuts while more than 1,500 will be subject to deferred resignations. It was not immediately clear how many of them would be foreign service versus civil service. Around 700 of those could be foreign service officers, one source said.
AFSA, established in 1924, has close to 16,800 members that include active-duty and retired staff of the Foreign Service at the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Commercial Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and U.S. Agency for Global Media.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; editing by Diane Craft)
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