During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Shelia Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) questioned Assistant Secretary of Administration, José Cunningham, about layoffs at the State Department.
00:00I now recognize the ranking member, Representative Sherphalice McCormick, for five minutes of questioning.
00:06Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to go and start digging in through the reduction in force that recently transpired.
00:13There's been a lot of questions about what happened in the processes.
00:17So I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell us what processes were in place to ensure that it was actually merit-based,
00:23and what did you take into consideration when you released these people?
00:27It's a fantastic question, and one that I've been intimately involved with for the past few months.
00:34I had the good opportunity of working at Export-Import Bank for the first eight weeks, nine weeks of this administration,
00:39and when I moved to the State Department to assume this role, I encountered a State Department under the leadership of Secretary Rubio
00:50that was talking in very broad strokes, but absolutely doing everything it needed to do
00:56to get down to brass tacks and how we make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous through a reorganization.
01:06The reorganization was actually done in a very thoughtful and organized way.
01:11When it came to the reduction in force, it was a data-driven exercise,
01:15whereby we first and foremost looked at the organizational structure that we needed in place in order to carry out the America First foreign policy agenda.
01:27So we put the organizational structure in place.
01:30As you can imagine, we found a lot of waste, fraud, and mismanagement along the way,
01:35and those are, that's really what constituted, when you hear about offices that were eliminated and removed,
01:43that's how we came up with the first organizational structure.
01:45I focus on that reorg first, because what we did was then, to follow on with that,
01:54to ensure that we had the right workforce that matched and aligned that organizational structure,
01:59we looked at positions, we did not look at names, we did not look at titles,
02:04we looked at positions that were necessary for us to carry out that America First foreign policy agenda,
02:10and worked very, very closely with the Office of Personnel Management, OPM,
02:16to ensure that we had the right folks in the Foreign Service, in the Civil Service,
02:20and we also looked at it from a contracting perspective.
02:23What were some of your data points? I just don't want my time to run out.
02:26What were some of the data points that you looked at? Because as we're talking to more and more of our diplomats,
02:31they're concerned about the merit-based justifications for who actually was released.
02:36Right. You're absolutely right to point out that a merit-based personnel policy is absolutely vital.
02:46One of the first things President Trump did in this administration was to ensure, through executive order,
02:51that we had a merit-based workforce, not only at the State Department, but throughout government.
02:57Included in that was taking a good, hard look at our diversity, inclusion, and equity rules.
03:03And so what we have today, through this data-driven process that we used for the reorganization,
03:09is that we have, we made sure that we were looking at skill sets.
03:14We're in the Foreign Service, so we also wanted to look at language capabilities.
03:19We also wanted to look at their experience.
03:21We were able to match up just about all of that with, and overlay it with the organizational structure in place.
03:28We did that. This is actually worth the saying.
03:31My time is running out, so I'm sorry. I just want to jump in.
03:34I also want to look at some of the mishaps that we're actually seeing in the reports of people who were let go
03:38and who have been hired back.
03:40Was that anticipated when you guys were setting out your process and procedures?
03:45If I have not heard of mishaps, we have found an anomaly or two that absolutely needed to be addressed.
03:53And if you yourself, ranking member, hear of an anomaly and like to be able to share that with us,
03:59we would, we'll absolutely look at that.
04:02We're looking at all of those in a case-by-case basis.
04:05And do you have a course correction plan that you're going to be using going forward in case these mishaps?
04:09Absolutely, because we want to make sure that we get this right,
04:13not only from a personnel perspective, but also perhaps even more importantly from a mission-driven perspective
04:19to make sure that we're able to really deliver on the America First foreign policy agenda.
04:25And before my time runs out, we've been hearing more and more about people who were actually let go,
04:30who were supposed to be rotating to other countries and other posts.
04:33And they were actually supposed to go within a day, two days, a week.
04:37So those people who are no longer going to that new post, are they being replaced?
04:41And do those people have the same expertise as the people who were let go?
04:46Yeah, I thank you for that question, Congresswoman.
04:50I will say that more than likely you're referring to some of the folks that,
04:55the effective date of the reduction in force and the reorganization was May 29th.
05:01And as you probably know, there was a stall in us being able to move on that reorg
05:11because of a district judge in San Francisco.
05:15And so depending on where the individual was on May 29th,
05:20when the secretary signed that reorganization in final,
05:23that probably is what dictates where that person is today
05:27and whether or not they're going to be able to go on to a forward assignment
05:30or if they got caught in an office that actually was eliminated.
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