Anonymous sent in a response to his letter to Chu:
"Thank you for sharing your concerns about the two-year pay freeze on site and facility management prime contractor employees announced by the Department of Energy on December 17, 2010.
The Department recognizes the sacrifice it is expecting from our contractor workforce, which does important research, operations and environmental cleanup work. As part of the DOE complex, you play an integral role in accomplishing the tasks that support the mission and operation of the Department. Secretary Chu feels strongly that site and facility management contractor employees should join with federal employees in making this sacrifice as our nation continues to recover from challenging economic times. Be assured that Department will face the same challenges and concerns you outlined for its employees.
The Department appreciates your continued support for its critical missions of advancing scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security."
12 comments:
Ditto - I received the EXACT same response.
Let's paraphrase Dr. Chu's response:
"We at the DOE aren't going to get any more raises. Therefore, because of our petty vindictiveness, we want be assured that all of our contractors suffer too, just like us. We realize the freezing pay at the contract sites won't actually save any money for DOE and will create an accounting nightmare in terms of figuring out what the M&O contractors can legally do with the extra money that was to go to raises. Frankly, we don't care. If we suffer, then we want to watch all our contractors squirm and suffer, too. That's how DOE HQ rolls, and I like it like that."
How many hundreds of thousands hours will this decision waste?
He can't think that this is a good idea.
Isn't there a single person around him who studied organizational behavior?
He praises education then ignores its findings.
Ignorant Laureate.
Dear Steve,
Thanks for the personal touch. I read your response this morning during my mid-morning constitutional, which I recently moved from its evening time slot.
Substantially equivalent indeed.
Oh yeah, except that I was paid $37.
Chu could have just semi-quoted Enerstine from SNL those many years ago:
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the DOE."
When we won the cold war and field testing stopped, DOE no longer NEEDED us. No new designs. From that point DOE recognized they cut the checks and were not beholding to designs we no longer produced.
Their job at that point forward was to keep their jobs. Congress anger simply translated to the need of MORE oversight, just what DOE excels at doing. Congress doesn't like DOE - simple create the NNSA whipping boy. And that agency, born of the blame game, realizes it's mission - CYA and get the labs to shoulder the blame.
The DOE OAK office must secretly dread the reduction of SNM at LLNL, soon the need for oversight will dramatically reduce as Superblock winks out of existance. And with that reduced oversight comes cuts at DOE OAK. But maybe THEY can transfer to other sites as LLNL withers away.
The filming of this movie is winding to completion. Strike the set, turn out the lights and call it a wrap. It was a nice run while it lasted.
The filming of this movie is winding to completion. Strike the set, turn out the lights and call it a wrap. It was a nice run while it lasted.
January 29, 2011 6:09 PM
I like your movie metaphor. All I would add is that the actors have gone to their trailers and shut off the lights. The Director has moved off to his next job. The spectators are left wanting more, and will freeze in the night wind at the ropes. The fans - well, there aren't any.
Game over.
All we have left to do is pretend to be monitoring the condition of the US nuclear stockpile while the DOE can pretend to be adequately compensating us for that task.
There are no "growth industries" present at the NNSA weapon labs any longer. The cobwebs are taking over while Bechtel and BWXT pocket the money that is left in this endeavor.
To continue the movie metaphor: It would be a lot cheaper to outsource the weapon simulations to Industrial Light and Magic. No one would know the difference, and the graphics would be better.
This latest PR piece from NNSA fed to the news media is good for some laughs:
January 28, 2011
NNSA Highlights Cutting-Edge Nuclear Science Facilities
HPCWire
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 -- The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is committed to promoting excellence in nuclear science and attracting the next generation of nuclear security experts to the field. As part of that effort, NNSA is celebrating National Nuclear Science Week with five days of features on the NNSA website that showcase the innovations and opportunities in nuclear science.
On day five of Nuclear Science Week, NNSA is highlighting several of the resources and state-of-art-facilities throughout the nuclear security enterprise that are attracting the best and the brightest to the field. From the world's largest laser, to some of the world's fastest computers, NNSA's investment in nuclear security has provided the nation with some of its most exciting nuclear science research tools.
"NNSA has built some of the world's most advanced and exciting research facilities, which has helped ensure we can complete our mission, attracted the next generation of nuclear security professionals and provided the nation the tools to tackle a broad array of complex national challenges," said Brig. Gen. Sandra Finan, principal assistant deputy administrator for military application. "As we continue to turn a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise, we are committed to maintaining our leading role in pushing the boundaries of science and discovery."
NNSA has not "built" any of the facilities it is crowing about, and has in fact tried to shut down some of those that are critical to its own mission. And it is about to cave in to anti-nuclear pressure to cancel building of the absolutely critical CMRR project at Los Alamos. NNSA is trying hard to put itself out of business. It makes one wonder who is running that show? What is the real NNSA agenda? Or, as many have suggested, are they just too stupid to have an agenda?
NNSA... great at issuing PR "puff pieces" about how wonderful they are; not so great at running a nuclear weapons complex that is vital to US strategic security.
The PR office in NNSA has become one of the most important departments in the agency since D'Agostino took over. He's pushing them hard to make himself look good.
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