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Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Lab revises its workforce management policies
On Newsline today:
"Lab revises its workforce management policies"
Here we go again!
24 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Seems like a rerun of 5 years ago just before Thansgiving, layoffs! Why not revise layoff procedures just before the WARN letters go out to all employees!!!
- you're unemployed - we're screwing you on your severance (all or at least some of it, recall how they cheated everyone out of one of their payments due last time) - ability to extend healthcare benefits (I'm sure they'll screw that up somehow, even though it's federal law) - pension credit (get a printout now and be ready to go to court to get what's due you)
WARN letter/notice filed with the State of California, 205 people, layoff date 11/15/12: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/eddwarnlwia12.pdf
I would hope they would at least have the decency to lay people off Jan 1 so any severance was paid in the new tax year and would basically be tax free to most folks if they were not able to find employment elsewhere.
That would be thoughtful and decent.
Hopefully they learned something from the terrible way they handled the layoffs last time.
Seems like a rerun of 5 years ago just before Thanksgiving, layoffs! Why not revise layoff procedures just before the WARN letters go out to all employees!!!
November 14, 2012 6:37 PM
What WARN letters. As far as I know the WARN act has been suspended until after all lay-offs are complete nationally and then will be reinstated. You need to be gone immediately and off the payroll. Each of you is costing the company approximately $450K a year and the company needs these funds for experiments, projects, salaries for upper level management and bonus/er checks deserved for doing such a shit-hot job of cost savings.
In reality it’s not this at all. Face it, if there’s no money coming in to support the number of people they have on the payroll they can’t keep people employed for doing nothing. They have to cut, maybe up to 50% of the population before this is all said and done. Then as they need people they’ll just hire them back as contacts with no benefits giving LLNS the flexibility to hire and fire as they need to.
It’s the new world order the Nov 6th election brought. You may as well welcome socialism, one world order and global economy, work for life slave labor workforce, and go with the flow. This is your world. It’s the world you voted into power just nine days ago and look at the change.
The bad news is this. As long as Santa Clause i.e. BHO continues to make promises of how the rich, $250K or more, will pay for all those who do nothing, the longer the fourth Reich will remain in power. It seems they failed to inform you on the facts of life.
The government can’t give you anything they haven’t taken from someone else and a government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take everything away.
Well, I think this is just the beginning. After 1-1-2013 they don't need a WARN act according to the new PPPM as long as they keep it under 50 a month. Amazing how hush, hush things are. 205 people out the gate on 11-15-2012.
Anonymous said... WARN letter/notice filed with the State of California, 205 people, layoff date 11/15/12: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/eddwarnlwia12.pdf
Okay, that 205 takes care of how many people LLNL had to get can to cover the loss of a $62M project, now how many will they have to let go to cover sequestration cuts in funding. Should we start a poll. I'm going to bet 800 + more, that would only be a 10% cut lab wide. Scooby, what do you think abotu that poll
What I find notable about the new RIF policy is that people in one project can be laid off when another project in the same division is hiring like crazy. The granularity of layoffs can be as small as one person, if EBA.
This policy eliminates management's motivation to reassign people to where they're needed. It's just easier if you don't have to bother with that.
The problem with this is that it balkanizes the Lab. Nobody will work in more than one place before he's kicked out. By the time someone has worked in a few different places in the Lab, he has a kind of LLNL-specialized breadth which you can't find outside. That's a major part of what makes Big Science work. LLNL doesn't have much else in the way of competitive advantages - it isn't any cheaper than a university or private company.
I find the new furlough policy equally disturbing. Furloughs can be by "business unit", job classification, PAD, Project, etc. etc. As Art Wong said, it gives the Lab "greater flexibility", What do my fellow Labbies think about this???
Anonymous said... Two words! It Sucks! Get furloughed for a year then get lid off and see what your unemployment is worth!!!
November 16, 2012 7:09 PM
Not only this but those who are close to 62 or 65 about ready for SS will find those promised $$ will be reduced since your SS is based on your salary and since it will be 20% less, you'll get 20% less. Compound that with getting laid off two or three years before you can draw SS and you'll find those years with no income are factored in and you'll even get less. Do you think this was all thought out very well to save the SS ponzi schemem? Hum??
Anonymous said... This is your world. It’s the world you voted into power just nine days ago and look at the change.
You are absolutely right! Things are so totally different. Texas is offering to secede from the Union.
November 16, 2012 8:44 PM
You will not see any change for the good I'll assure you unless you're a no-load freeloading socialist who beleives anyone who make more than $250K a year is rich and all those plus whomever makes more should pay your way thru life via taxation without representation. This has been typical thinking for this breed for the last sixty-years and I suspect as this type continues to multiply like rats at the tax payers expense their offspring will assist the counties demise. It's amazing what we've allowed and by doing so has cost us a country.
If you are an honest, smart, hard-working employee, you are a resource to be used and not rewarded. If you are an incompetent loudmouth, raises and promotions will rain down upon you. The workforce management policies can be revised and revised and nothing will change.
"If you are an honest, smart, hard-working employee, you are a resource to be used and not rewarded."
Very true.
"If you are an incompetent loudmouth, raises and promotions will rain down upon you."
Not exactly.
I'd say it's more like if you are someone who has:
- no technical ability (and therefore can't help on that end) - plays internal politics 24/7 - goes along with the Bechtel line on everything (shows no signs of critical thought) - and due to the weakness of your negotiating position (no tech skills, no ability to have a job outside LLNL, kids/wife/mortgage/etc) you seem very malleable and they have distinct leverage on you. Then you join the leadership.
As your salary builds and you become periodically EBA, you keep getting re-inserted into mgmt because you can't move the lab forward on the tech side, your salary is too high to have a non-mgmt job (and there is no mechanism for lowering it), and your yes-man bona fides have been qualified.
It's amazing how this institution which used to be a place of vigorous debate has turned into the USSR - which is what we were all fighting against.
Ironic.
Time for some creative destruction. Junk the DOE labs, they are beyond ossified (managerially, structurally, and now all of that is impacting the technical as well as talent floods out and what remains is trapped in bureaucratic sludge).
Time for some creative destruction. Junk the DOE labs, they are beyond ossified (managerially, structurally, and now all of that is impacting the technical as well as talent floods out and what remains is trapped in bureaucratic sludge).
November 18, 2012 11:00 AM
This mission was accomplished the day they contracted LLNL from the UC to LLNS. We all knew it was just a matter of time and here we are. Close them up and give the jobs to the private sector. We're done.
Thank God we don't have Romney as our president.He was going to tax the middle class and from my read of this thread it would seem he had bamboozled more than a few of you. Had Romney been elected the research labs would have been decimated.
a) The "research" labs have already been decimated. They're not doing much research. Especially relative to the amount of funding being consumed (80-90% of which never reaches a researcher).
b) Doubtful. Romney was planning to increase the defense budget by $2T (how? who knows, the math doesn't work, I'm just saying that was his campaign promise). Likely the weapons labs would have been moved under DOD (Repubs want that) and funding would have maintained (Repubs like weapons, including nukes). Also, decimating top republican donor Riley Bechtel's labs doesn't seem likely.
Romney never mentioned weapons labs in his defense spending speeches. Never. He only talked about more ships for the Navy (14 ships per year), 100,00 troops and missile defense. Non of those spending venues have anything to do with LLNL. Romney would have had to come up with the money to implement this plan and you can be sure funding resources for the lab would have been impacted.
24 comments:
Seems like a rerun of 5 years ago just before Thansgiving, layoffs! Why not revise layoff procedures just before the WARN letters go out to all employees!!!
WARN letters have started.
Happy Thanksgiving: WARN notice
Merry Xmas: you're fired
Happy New Year:
- you're unemployed
- we're screwing you on your severance (all or at least some of it, recall how they cheated everyone out of one of their payments due last time)
- ability to extend healthcare benefits (I'm sure they'll screw that up somehow, even though it's federal law)
- pension credit (get a printout now and be ready to go to court to get what's due you)
WARN letter/notice filed with the State of California, 205 people, layoff date 11/15/12: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/eddwarnlwia12.pdf
I would hope they would at least have the decency to lay people off Jan 1 so any severance was paid in the new tax year and would basically be tax free to most folks if they were not able to find employment elsewhere.
That would be thoughtful and decent.
Hopefully they learned something from the terrible way they handled the layoffs last time.
WARN act notices have been out for a while and are connected with the release of security folks due to lab's de-inventory -
Anonymous said...
Seems like a rerun of 5 years ago just before Thanksgiving, layoffs!
Why not revise layoff procedures just before the WARN letters go out to all employees!!!
November 14, 2012 6:37 PM
What WARN letters. As far as I know the WARN act has been suspended until after all lay-offs are complete nationally and then will be reinstated. You need to be gone immediately and off the payroll. Each of you is costing the company approximately $450K a year and the company needs these funds for experiments, projects, salaries for upper level management and bonus/er checks deserved for doing such a shit-hot job of cost savings.
In reality it’s not this at all. Face it, if there’s no money coming in to support the number of people they have on the payroll they can’t keep people employed for doing nothing. They have to cut, maybe up to 50% of the population before this is all said and done. Then as they need people they’ll just hire them back as contacts with no benefits giving LLNS the flexibility to hire and fire as they need to.
It’s the new world order the Nov 6th election brought. You may as well welcome socialism, one world order and global economy, work for life slave labor workforce, and go with the flow. This is your world. It’s the world you voted into power just nine days ago and look at the change.
The bad news is this. As long as Santa Clause i.e. BHO continues to make promises of how the rich, $250K or more, will pay for all those who do nothing, the longer the fourth Reich will remain in power. It seems they failed to inform you on the facts of life.
The government can’t give you anything they haven’t taken from someone else and a government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take everything away.
http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/eddwarnlwia12.pdf
Well, I think this is just the beginning. After 1-1-2013 they don't need a WARN act according to the new PPPM as long as they keep it under 50 a month. Amazing how hush, hush things are. 205 people out the gate on 11-15-2012.
Anonymous said...
WARN letter/notice filed with the State of California, 205 people, layoff date 11/15/12: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/eddwarnlwia12.pdf
Okay, that 205 takes care of how many people LLNL had to get can to cover the loss of a $62M project, now how many will they have to let go to cover sequestration cuts in funding. Should we start a poll. I'm going to bet 800 + more, that would only be a 10% cut lab wide. Scooby, what do you think abotu that poll
What I find notable about the new RIF policy is that people in one project can be laid off when another project in the same division is hiring like crazy. The granularity of layoffs can be as small as one person, if EBA.
This policy eliminates management's motivation to reassign people to where they're needed. It's just easier if you don't have to bother with that.
The problem with this is that it balkanizes the Lab. Nobody will work in more than one place before he's kicked out. By the time someone has worked in a few different places in the Lab, he has a kind of LLNL-specialized breadth which you can't find outside. That's a major part of what makes Big Science work. LLNL doesn't have much else in the way of competitive advantages - it isn't any cheaper than a university or private company.
01/01/13 EBA's and employees with poor performance evaluations will be headed out the gate 49 at a time
I find the new furlough policy equally disturbing. Furloughs can be by "business unit", job classification, PAD, Project, etc. etc. As Art Wong said, it gives the Lab "greater flexibility", What do my fellow Labbies think about this???
Two words! It Sucks! Get furloughed for a year then get lid off and see what your unemployment is worth!!!
Anonymous said...
Two words! It Sucks! Get furloughed for a year then get lid off and see what your unemployment is worth!!!
November 16, 2012 7:09 PM
Not only this but those who are close to 62 or 65 about ready for SS will find those promised $$ will be reduced since your SS is based on your salary and since it will be 20% less, you'll get 20% less. Compound that with getting laid off two or three years before you can draw SS and you'll find those years with no income are factored in and you'll even get less. Do you think this was all thought out very well to save the SS ponzi schemem? Hum??
This is your world. It’s the world you voted into power just nine days ago and look at the change.
You are absolutely right! Things are so totally different. Texas is offering to secede from the Union.
Anonymous said...
This is your world. It’s the world you voted into power just nine days ago and look at the change.
You are absolutely right! Things are so totally different. Texas is offering to secede from the Union.
November 16, 2012 8:44 PM
You will not see any change for the good I'll assure you unless you're a no-load freeloading socialist who beleives anyone who make more than $250K a year is rich and all those plus whomever makes more should pay your way thru life via taxation without representation. This has been typical thinking for this breed for the last sixty-years and I suspect as this type continues to multiply like rats at the tax payers expense their offspring will assist the counties demise. It's amazing what we've allowed and by doing so has cost us a country.
If you are an honest, smart, hard-working employee, you are a resource to be used and not rewarded. If you are an incompetent loudmouth, raises and promotions will rain down upon you. The workforce management policies can be revised and revised and nothing will change.
"If you are an honest, smart, hard-working employee, you are a resource to be used and not rewarded."
Very true.
"If you are an incompetent loudmouth, raises and promotions will rain down upon you."
Not exactly.
I'd say it's more like if you are someone who has:
- no technical ability (and therefore can't help on that end)
- plays internal politics 24/7
- goes along with the Bechtel line on everything (shows no signs of critical thought)
- and due to the weakness of your negotiating position (no tech skills, no ability to have a job outside LLNL, kids/wife/mortgage/etc) you seem very malleable and they have distinct leverage on you. Then you join the leadership.
As your salary builds and you become periodically EBA, you keep getting re-inserted into mgmt because you can't move the lab forward on the tech side, your salary is too high to have a non-mgmt job (and there is no mechanism for lowering it), and your yes-man bona fides have been qualified.
It's amazing how this institution which used to be a place of vigorous debate has turned into the USSR - which is what we were all fighting against.
Ironic.
Time for some creative destruction. Junk the DOE labs, they are beyond ossified (managerially, structurally, and now all of that is impacting the technical as well as talent floods out and what remains is trapped in bureaucratic sludge).
Time for some creative destruction. Junk the DOE labs, they are beyond ossified (managerially, structurally, and now all of that is impacting the technical as well as talent floods out and what remains is trapped in bureaucratic sludge).
November 18, 2012 11:00 AM
This mission was accomplished the day they contracted LLNL from the UC to LLNS. We all knew it was just a matter of time and here we are. Close them up and give the jobs to the private sector. We're done.
Thank God we don't have Romney as our president.He was going to tax the middle class and from my read of this thread it would seem he had bamboozled more than a few of you. Had Romney been elected the research labs would have been decimated.
a) The "research" labs have already been decimated. They're not doing much research. Especially relative to the amount of funding being consumed (80-90% of which never reaches a researcher).
b) Doubtful. Romney was planning to increase the defense budget by $2T (how? who knows, the math doesn't work, I'm just saying that was his campaign promise). Likely the weapons labs would have been moved under DOD (Repubs want that) and funding would have maintained (Repubs like weapons, including nukes). Also, decimating top republican donor Riley Bechtel's labs doesn't seem likely.
November 18, 2012 9:48 PM
Romney never mentioned weapons labs in his defense spending speeches. Never. He only talked about more ships for the Navy (14 ships per year), 100,00 troops and missile defense. Non of those spending venues have anything to do with LLNL.
Romney would have had to come up with the money to implement this plan and you can be sure funding resources for the lab would have been impacted.
Efforts to improve the workforce management would surely be great step towards the success of a company.
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