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Monday, June 28, 2010

Layoffs?

Contributed by thief:

As the screws are slowly turned on the federal budget....has anyone heard any decent layoff rumors recently?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Engineering is hiring regularly, not trying to skinny down.

Anonymous said...

No. We have not heard any such thing.

Anonymous said...

Have not heard a whisper of such an event. But remember, the lab could be sneaking people out the gate in numbers low enough to not trigger the WARN act and the layoff policy has been re-written to make it easier to get us out the door.

Anonymous said...

...the lab could be sneaking people out the gate..

Wait, I thought I had tenure!

Anonymous said...

Also .... as I recall, Contractors, FX, Suppl. Laborers,etc
do NOT go through a 'Layoff'. Their contracts are just terminated and let go ... I don't think they (LLNS) consider these as a layoff.

Anonymous said...

Lab budgets are suppose to go up next year, but the political buzz I'm hearing from DC indicates that you can probably count on another budget stalemate in Congress for next year. If so, then LANL and LLNL will both be held at last year's budget levels.

Given the rising costs that have been generated by both NNSA and the LLCs, this could result in some staff layoffs later in FY 2011. Stay tuned...

Anonymous said...

There is a shortfall of money in the Environmental Waste Programs at LANS and contractors will be fired soon. So much for all the LANS hoopla about Obama money in the Environmental Program and workers being transferred from the Weapon Program because there was a surplus of money there. What LANS managers did was effectively corner all their misfit and unwanted workers in the Environmental Program so that LANS managers could have a good old fashioned "turkey shoot".

Anonymous said...

What LANS managers did was effectively corner all their misfit and unwanted workers in the Environmental Program so that LANS managers could have a good old fashioned "turkey shoot". (5:06 pm)


The labs are one, vast "turkey shoot" to the good ol' Bechtel Boys who now run these labs for a tidy profit. They own the place and will run it exactly to NNSA specs... which is to say, straight into the ground. Compliance and risk aversion is all that matters these days, as the recent APS article so aptly states (Thanks for contributing those relevant comments, Sig!)

Regardless of all this, morale at the labs has actually improved a bit as more staff decide to finally give up and go through the motions of pretending to do science that matters under the burden of a huge, bloated bureaucracy.

Many of the very best scientists have long since left these labs for saner and better managed institutions not overseen by a politically connected and corrupt "construction company" (aka Bechtel). The upper management teams appear to be fine with that.

Anonymous said...

Actual funds at all NNSA labs is going up next year due to an infusion of DOD funds. While this is a 1 time it could be the trend of increasing use of DOE R&D labs to support convetional DOD needs.
Should we all take this as an opportunity to apply our can-do to these challenges, we could see some very kool type weapons work shift into our arena.
Carpe chance.

Anonymous said...

Standard come and goes will continues but we should expect to see 200 + new positions in FY11.

Anonymous said...

Layoffs (RIFs) create way too many political problems for lab upper management.

Now that the labs are run by corporate types like Bechtel and BWXT, it's easier to just fire people for "cause" and hustle them through the exits when the sheep herd needs a bit of thinning. Only the few union employees at the labs seem to have anything close to what you might think of as "tenure".

Anonymous said...

There is always room in the head count reduction process to lay off the constant whiners at the labs.

If you don't want to worry about being laid off, then work hard, keep a "can-do" attitude, and follow all the rules to the letter. It's as simple as that.

Anonymous said...

10 contract employees were fired this week at LANS on the Waste Disposal Project (WDP) at LANS. It is rumored that Inez Triay was nixed on passing stimulus money from either Y-12 or Savannah River since the money could not be transferred across state lines. There is a $3M to $5M overrun in WDP. LANS considers contract employees expendable, with the exception of the "protected" Bechtel employees.

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