International: Rifted, Bumped & Slotted

Ten thousand Americans in Paris were using—with wry distaste—a new verb last week. The word is riffed. It means to be fired for economy, and it comes from the bureaucratic phrase Reduction In Force, the new Dulles-Stassen program to cut down expenses in the agencies that hand out U.S. aid overseas. Last June Congress directed Foreign Operations Director Harold Stassen to 1) fire 10% of the old Mutual Security Agency staff; 2) slash by a third the number of jobholders getting $12,000 a year or more.

Paris, which a year ago had four U.S. officials with the rank of ambassador,* and was crowded with proliferating U.S. missions to NATO, EDC and OEEC, was the obvious place to begin. The State Department cut its staff 30%. Stassen also set to work. Half a dozen special agencies were lumped into one big U.S. Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Regional Organizations (USRO). Two hundred Americans and 437 French employees were riffed in the process; the savings would cut USRO's administrative expenses in Paris by 50%. Other Americans suffered drastic cuts in what the British call "perks" (short for perquisites). FOA staffers will no longer get free bus service to the PX stores, and if they make less than $6,000 a year, must cross the Atlantic in cabin, not first class, with the Government paying the bill. Free French lessons are out; so are chauffeur-driven limousines for all but the six top executives.

Not all the savings are net to the U.S. taxpayer. A riffed employee who is a permanent civil servant usually gets slotted (reabsorbed) in Washington. Another can sometimes bump (push out) the man below him, and move down into his job. The bumping process can presumably continue until only the office junior is riffed.

The bureaucrats acknowledged that their staffs could stand squeezing, but last week Americans in Paris complained that riffing had reached the point where it is doing more harm than good. Complaints of insecurity and low morale have reached Congress. One newly riffed employee draped his office with crape and coined a new word for what had happened to him. He had, he said, been Stassenated.