 "US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump's State Department budget request for the Department of State, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday. Reuters file")
The US Department of State has announced plans to lay off 15 per cent of its domestic staff as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades. While speaking on the matter, the department officials noted that the cuts would align with President Donald Trump’s vision of “ America First ”.
The layoffs are being referred to as reductions in force (RIFs) and would also include voluntary redundancies. A senior member of the department said that the move would affect around 1,800 people. They mentioned that the restructuring would also see the merger of several hundred bureaus, The Guardian reported.
The news of the layoffs is coming days after the US Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration against a federal judge’s rule to hold the mass government firings, since it would affect the lives of hundreds and thousands of employees.
“In the coming days, the department will be communicating with individuals affected by the reduction in force. First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States,” read a memo attributed to Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary for management and resources, announcing the layoffs.
Why the State Department is going ahead with the layoffs
The department officials noted that they wanted to eliminate redundant positions and agencies to save costs. They mentioned that there were three offices at the state department managing sanctions policy, and that other offices had “proliferated” under former US President Bill Clinton during the post-Cold War era.
“It was looking at what the functions are that are redundant, are overlapping or are no longer aligned with the president’s foreign policy priorities in a post-Cold War world,” said a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on the restructuring. “In an era of great power competition, what should a state department look like?”
The officials argued that the changes will empower regional bureaus by creating a simpler chain of command. The move is also likely to empower political appointees, making the unwieldy state department bureaucracy easier for the Trump administration to manage.
“A lot of this covers redundant offices and takes some of these cross-cutting functions and moves them to the regional bureaus and our embassies overseas, to the people who are closest to where diplomacy is happening,” the official told The Guardian.
Where the changes are going to be
The memo mentioned that some of the bureaus focusing on immigration and democracy promotion will see their missions significantly altered under the Trump administration, which has been sceptical about traditional American diplomacy abroad.
For instance, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, which previously helped facilitate legal immigration into the United States, would instead be reformed to include an office of remigration to facilitate deportations , The Guardian reported.
However, the officials have declined to comment on the plans for the RIFs, insisting that they would want the employees “to hear from the department first, just for their own dignity”.