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Has anyone heard the numbers of employees who retired by the end of December at Sandia? As their retirement program was changing effective Jan 1 2012, I heard they expected about 1,000 employees to retire in 2011 before the new formula took effect. I'm wondering if any of the Sandia employees will be applying at LLNL.
6 comments:
The number I heard was about 600 by close of the year.
I am not sure about LLNL but I have heard of a number Sandia people who plan on starting at LANL 2012. I think these people live in Santa Fe or plan on moving there. I am not sure about the exact number.
Retirements Soar at Sandia
By John Fleck / Journal Staff Writer on Sat, Jan 14, 2012
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Sandia National Laboratories lost 511 people to retirement in the final three months of 2011, an unusually large number as workers moved to lock in retiree health and pension benefits before reductions began on Jan. 1.
That brings to about 940 the number of retirees over the past 15 months, nearly three times the normal retirement rate of 330 over comparable periods in the past, according to Sandia data. Sandia officials declined to comment on the issue beyond releasing the retirement numbers.
In 2009, Sandia announced it was capping its generous retiree health benefit program. For retirees with 30 years of service, for example, Sandia currently pays 90 percent of health care costs between the date of retirement and when the person becomes eligible for Medicare. The change put a cap on those payments for people who retire after Jan. 1, 2012. If premiums rise, Sandia will not pay the increased costs.
Also, Sandia changed the way retirement benefits are calculated, which had the effect of reducing pensions for employees who retire after Jan. 1, 2012. For example, under the changes, employees retiring in 2015 after 28 years of service with a final salary of $111,000 would see their pension drop from $52,200 a year to $48,600 a year, according to Sandia.
When Sandia announced the benefit changes in 2009, there were fears the nuclear weapons research center could see as many as 1,500 retirements, with the departures coming at a time when federal officials were expressing fears about the loss of nuclear weapons expertise.
Sandia hired 1,130 new employees in 2011, according to spokesman Jim Danneskiold, with the hiring focused on creating an opportunity for the new workers to learn from the retirees before they left.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
The plan is to get rid of all the older NNSA lab employees who may have great experience and expertise but are seen as too expensive by the highly compensated "for profit" LLC management team now in place at the labs.
The latest experience at SNL clearly shows that lab management is working hard to push expertise out the front door and replace it with a low cost, young, inexperienced labor force.
Good look with that one!
Why stick around when you have 15+ more years of career work under that management? What would have been the next "disincentive to stay"? I will be amazed if there is not a class action suit on age discrimination. They got what they wanted, reduced costs of labor, but they forgot, expensive labor is expensive for a reason, it is very productive and versatile. The cost problem there is not staff labor cost too high, it is the incredible growth in management layers and increase in numbers of non-technical administrators, budgeteers, marketeers, and opulent new construction for facilities with huge operating overhead no one wants to pay. Gone three weeks and getting calls and emails for "HELP!"
Well written article
Kyle Rolek CFP®
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