Salary For Embassy Workers

[Girino]

I was browsing on the US Embassy website for job openings, and currently there are 2. One of them is for ad administrative clerk and the compensation is FSN-6 of the local compensation scale, which means ARS 3,592 bi-weekly, roughly ARS 7200/month.

Compared to a similar job for the Italian Embassy in Buenos Aires, where the Salary is around €2300 net/month, it looks like the US Embassy is exploiting the local population.

Can anybody shed a light on this? I always thought that working for Embassy lead to a great salary and load of benefits, and assumed it was the same for any Embassy...

 

[RodalfoWalsh]

You have to work for the foreign service.

 

[Noruega]

Yes, you have to work for the country's foreign service/diplomatic corps to get the real good salaries and benefits. Norway, for instance, has local employees at all their embassies and consulates. These can be Norwegians who already live there, or people from the country in question, like Argentina. In Washington DC, the difference between the local workers and the diplomats were gigantic, and I noticed that basically all the local workers were Norwegian women who were married with someone who had a well paying job - it would have been very, very difficult to live on what they were paying, in a rather expensive part of the US, especially with children. Most of them also lived way out into the suburbs. To me it seemed kind of unfair - they do just as much work as those sent from Norway, they provide much-needed continuity, and they see their colleagues get all sorts of benefits such as paid housing. I agree that they should not get paid housing or private school education, but they should get a decent wage, competitive with similar jobs in Washington.

The Norwegian local workers were actually able to join together in a sort-of union in Norway, to be able to work together for better conditions. At first, it seemed impossible because Norway said that they should follow the rules in the host country, while the host country says that the embassy is really a piece of Norway, so they should follow Norwegian regulation. In the end they were able to organize in Norway. (Sorry I got kind of off-topic but I knew several people in this situation so I followed the developments closely.)

 

[wineguy999]

I guess it depends on the country. A generation ago I worked for the Australian consulate in Houston, and was paid very well by local standards.

 

[Hybrid Ambassador]

The pay scale of locally hired personnel's salary will differ from country to other, just looked up Japanese embassy's local hire remuneration and with contract 1~3 years, it pays US$2500 per month plus health,sick leave,vacation, yearly raises,etc. So that miser wage paid from the US emabassy/consulate to local hires is pretty stingy..Italian embassy pay of €2300 net/month is at par with the Nipponese and fair.

 

[ghost]

I was browsing on the US Embassy website for job openings, and currently there are 2. One of them is for ad administrative clerk and the compensation is FSN-6 of the local compensation scale, which means ARS 3,592 bi-weekly, roughly ARS 7200/month.

Compared to a similar job for the Italian Embassy in Buenos Aires, where the Salary is around €2300 net/month, it looks like the US Embassy is exploiting the local population.

Can anybody shed a light on this? I always thought that working for Embassy lead to a great salary and load of benefits, and assumed it was the same for any Embassy...

Generally an Embassy will try to keep the local salaries similar to the local market. Maybe a little better and certainly better in respect to secure pay. On the other hand jobs working for the State Dept as an Embassy employee pay to the scale of the homeland because you are technically at a temporary station. There are some extra perks and housing and schools etc but oddly enough, state dept employees have the highest level of bankruptcies of any gov employee.

 

[Girino]

Yeah, but 7200 ARS a month is less than a teacher in a public school and less than a taxi driver. I understand that is no job for rocket scientists, but they can do better than 7200 ARS a month for an almost bilingual clerk working 40 hours a week.

I have always thought that working at an Embassy was a prestigious job, not a hobby for bored wives.

 

[ghost]

Yeah, but 7200 ARS a month is less than a teacher in a public school and less than a taxi driver. I understand that is no job for rocket scientists, but they can do better than 7200 ARS a month for an almost bilingual clerk working 40 hours a week.

I have always thought that working at an Embassy was a prestigious job, not a hobby for bored wives.

With the idiots we have in congress right now they are lucky to have any budget at all.

 

[citygirl]

That's also the net salary. Gross (bruto) would be around 8700 a month. That seems right about in line for a lowish level admin job. You're also not calculating in the 13th month.

 

[nkotb]

There's nothing prestigious about an entry level admin job at an embassy (or anywhere else). That said, they pay very little because they can. Obviously there are people willing to do the work for little money for whatever reason. To Noruega - foreign service nationals (a US term of art for local hires) do not do the same jobs as foreign service officers brought in from the homeland. Your fairness argument fails.