State Dept will lay off 1,350 employees as reorganization nears final phase

State Dept will lay off 1,350 employees as reorganization nears final phase

The State Department is giving employees notice that widespread layoffs are coming “soon,” as part of its biggest reorganization plan in decades.

Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, told the workforce in an email Thursday evening that the department will soon send RIF notices to employees.

“Once notifications have taken place, the Department will enter the final state of its reorganization and focus its attention on delivering results-driven diplomacy,” Rigas wrote.

A Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume its plans to shrink the federal workforce and reorganize agencies.

The department is trimming back the overall scope of its layoffs, compared to what it told Congress last month, according to current and former State Department officials. Just over 1,350 employees in total are expected to receive layoffs through a reduction-in-force (RIF).

An internal notice from the State Department’s Bureau of Global Talent Management states 1,107 civil service and 246 Foreign Service employees will receive RIF notices,  Notices are expected to go out starting Friday.

The State Department told lawmakers last month that it plans to lay off nearly 1,900 employees through a reduction-in-force. In earlier versions of these plans, as many as 700 Foreign Service offices would’ve received RIF notices.

About 1,600 employees have already agreed to leave the agency through voluntary incentives, including both rounds of the “deferred resignation” program.

Between the RIFs and departures under the deferred resignation programs, the department told Congress in June that it was looking at an 18% cut to its workforce.

The reorganization plan will impact more than 300 bureaus and offices, and will eliminate divisions that department leaders have deemed unnecessary or duplicative.

The Public Diplomacy Council of America told members in an email Thursday that the State Department “has apparently encountered a problem with the RIF software that caps the number of emails that can be sent at a time.”

PDCA Co-President Karl Stoltz wrote that instead of most RIF notices going out Friday morning, “rolling RIFs” are expected throughout the day.

Stoltz said that Foreign Service officers recently recommended for promotions and officials serving on promotion panels are among those who will receive RIF notices.

A former State Department official familiar with the reorganization plans told Federal News Network that the workforce cuts will impact many mid-career and senior executives.

“It’s not how many, it’s who is getting RIF’d that is the story,” the former department official said.

The former State Department official said many bureau-level executives are expected to receive RIF notices,  as part of consolidations happening under the office of the under secretary for management.

“A lot of those directors at that level are being RIF’d,” the former department official said. “And these are people that have 15 years there.”

According to the former official, about 200 non-RIF-eligible employees will be offered another position at a lower grade, with the expectation that they will voluntarily leave the department.

Rigas called the RIF a “targeted reduction” in the department’s domestic workforce. The State Department previously told employees, in a frequently asked questions document, that the RIF to domestic offices and functions “will impact both civil and foreign service personnel.”

The department, in preparation for the layoffs, told civil service employees to upload their resumes and to “confirm and update their employment information.”

“Every effort has been made to support our colleagues who are departing, including those who opted into the Deferred Resignation Programs,” Rigas said.

The former State Department official said many civil service employees were eligible for voluntary separation incentive payments that were offered ahead of the RIF notices. But the department was limited in who could take the offer, because of the cost of paying out unused leave as part of employees’ severance.

Last year, the former official said, the State Department hit its ceiling on funds allowed for domestic workforce salaries.

“We couldn’t hire because we had reached our ceiling, and the ceiling was dependent on how much money we’d get from the government to pay for salaries. There’s a real limit there,” the former official said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Thursday that officials “took a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” and that “our plan that we notified to Congress is what we intend to do.”

“It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions,” Rubio said.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Thursday that the department is moving into the “implementation” phase of its reorganization plan.

“The Supreme Court’s recent near-unanimous decision allows the reorganization to commence and will ensure that the department moves at the speed of relevancy and restores the department to its roots of results-driven democracy,” Bruce said.

“It’s sometimes difficult, as any enterprise in America has learned, that when change is necessary — but in this case, we’ve inherited a dynamic that needed reform, and we are taking and implementing reform,” she added.

The American Foreign Service Association warned last month that these layoffs come at a time when the Foreign Service is “under-resourced and stretched thin.”

AFSA estimates a quarter of the Foreign Service workforce has been reduced since January through early retirements, agency closures and buyouts.

“RIFs should be a last resort,” AFSA President Tom Yazdgerdi said.” Disrupting the Foreign Service like this puts national interests at risk — and Americans everywhere will bear the consequences.”