Sacked AFSC worker says goodbye
'Letter claimed that there was "a dramatic re-engineering of the organizational structure of AFSC proposed by management and Board leadership that will alter the Quaker character of the organization".'
A former director at American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), who was fired after criticising the organisation’s restructuring programme, has urged her colleagues to continue ‘fostering the distinct message and principle of Friends’.
Writing in a goodbye letter sent to the corporation members on 21 March, Lucy Duncan, former director of Friends Relations for AFSC, said: ‘I will miss the work of rooting ourselves in the witness and wisdom of the communities in which AFSC works, in sometimes quite perilous circumstances, and from which such holy longing and truth arises. Remember that you matter to AFSC, that your voices and Quaker practice are elemental to the AFSC.’
The Quaker was sacked on 3 January after co-authoring an open letter published in Western Friend criticising a restructuring plan that she says was first proposed by AFSC leadership in an April 2021 memo. The letter was titled ‘AFSC Stands at a Perilous Crossroads’.
The letter claimed that there was ‘a dramatic re-engineering of the organizational structure of AFSC proposed by management and Board leadership that will alter the Quaker character of the organization’.
She also wrote that AFSC plans to put ‘$500,000 per year into a commitment to fund six additional middle management positions while adding no resources into the programs on the ground. It is unclear from where the funding for the new management positions will come’. She also claimed that no resources will be put into existing programmes. The 16 April memo said that the AFSC Board expected to act on the restructuring plan in April 2022.
The Friend has approached ASFC for comment and to ask whether restructuring plans are going ahead, but has so far received no response.
According to Friends Journal, Lucy Duncan has filed a wrongful termination grievance with American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 47, the union that represents her.
A group of US Friends concerned with the restructuring at AFSC and subsequent firing of Lucy Duncan, gathered online recently to discuss the issue.
