Greetings,
Far-reaching changes in LLNL personnel policy go into effect
this January 1, and Lab management has undergone an extensive campaign to “spin”
these changes. In our December 2012 monthly memo (http://www.upte.org/spse/
We are also hosting one of our Noontime Talks on this subject this
coming Wednesday, December 12, in building 453 Armadillo Room 1001. We invite
you to attend, and bring your questions and comments.
If you cannot attend our talk, please feel free to contact
us directly:
Thanks,
Riki Gay
President-elect SPSE-UPTE Local 11
Comments
I would have re-written this sentence to state:
"A career position at LLNL meant just that; if you succeeded at your job, you had a solid opportunity to make a career of it until you retired. Now, YOU DO NOT." The concept of a "career" at LLNS (and LANS) has been eliminated. LLNS (and LANS) will terminate you or transfer you (without warning) to any position it see fits without regard to your skills, knowledge, or abilities or regardless of you are an asset to National Security.
December 9, 2012 9:45 AM
Absolutely not! LANS tops my list. And for those (e.g. LANS management) who tell to "leave" or "don't let the door hit your ass on my way out", I say NOPE I don't want to leave, I was there far before the "carpet bagging" Bechtel and Livermore "big three arrive". So them I say, "stick it"!
You work hard to bring in outrageous amounts of funding to help pay for these scum-bags in LANS management and they demand that it all be done on your own time... on "family time". What a bunch of low-life rats. LANL is in a firm death grip under the LANS/Bechtel/NNSA management team.
December 9, 2012 1:19 PM
The reason is quite clear. The government demands that all of your paid work time be charged to an active program. Programs do not pay for scientists trying to get work from future programs. This rule has been in effect since I joined LANL in the late '70s. The difference is that it was never "enforced" before - management just looked the other way (reasonably so) while you worked on your next funding proposal. It was seen (rightly) as a good investment, and I don't recall any sponsor auditing to that level of detail. It appears that now the LANS management has become so risk averse that it cannot even envision this small, traditional, "bending" of the rules. If applied strictly, the result will be paralysis of programs, and widespread lack of new funding. My recommendation (which I would have hated while I was a manager) is to institute "malicious compliance" - simply refuse to work on new funding proposals. Since managers are paid off the top of work programs, this dries up their salaries too. Brutal to all concerned, but simple and effective.
It was always true that some mid-level managers were poor leaders and money managers, but employees rarely were hurt. Now one cursed is many cursed.
It will call for employees to protect themselves from the organization rather than supporting it.
What a foolish mistake, openly putting powerless employees are risk for others failures.
The most logical protection is to develop a collective negotiated group of workplace rules and customs.
Another modern miracle from the cauldron of Lynn Soderstrom?
I intended to remove the profanity, but I got distracted and pushed the send button prior to counting to 10.
My apology to Parney for the profanity, it is of no use.
As anyone that works at the labs knows, it takes forever to actually hire someone, and then further time to get them rolling. So there is back-pressure on management to give people time to catch on with new project areas. I'll wait and see how the new policies get used before deciding if we're pulling a plastic bag over our heads.
Already happening at LANL. Probably soon to follow at LLNL. New program growth is slowing and funding is in decline as staff simply "give up" under this strict LLC management "C.Y.A" nonsense. It has been a particularly hard blow to the "Global Security" type lab directorates. The result is a lab that is becoming even less diversified, not more!
Looks like GS programs are going down at LANL. A couple years ago the trend was up. What happened to reverse it so fast?
The guy was just passing along what he heard.
If you've heard differently, tell us what you've heard.
I agree, that was the first poster.
I was referring to the second poster. The one that started: "here is the future of llnl after 1-1-13"
That seemed to have less of a personal agenda.
Thanks for the giggle!
The poster is right. LLNS and LANS are in the business of making money.
If you help them make money you stay if do not help them make money you go. Simple as that. You are in the real world now the fairytale is over. You like any other worker in real world, you are just as interchangeable as the anyone. Look we have 8% unemployment and all these people will take you job in a heartbeat. Think about that before you rock the boat or think that you our special, you are not. There is no difference between you and everyone else. This is how capitalism works. I know we have been sheltered too long from the real world but we are part of it now.
It's no longer about the science. Slick, scientific "achievement" PRs for the public's consumption, maybe, not definitely not the actual science.
No they just promote the people who have Tomas ideas...
It's amazing how 3 different LLNL studies on D2 EoS produce data that all sit right on top of the same Hugoniot, and all are wrong. One experimental, and two theoretical using very different methods.
" LLNL is not like a business in a capitalist system. LLNL is clearly a kleptocracy. Don't fool yourself into thinking that it operates just like a corporation. It clearly doesn't. Know the difference. Don't be soiling the name of private sector corporations by trying to label LLNL as being like them.
December 15, 2012 7:37 PM"
Ahh, someone gets it. To some this is a subtle point. With the mantra that private is always better than government people do not seem to understand what this really means.
It only works if true capitalism is in place and even than many or most private corps fail over time.
What we have is not even capitalism since it violates the rules for capitalism.
(1) The rules for reward where
written by the corporation to give the corporation a huge advantage.
(2) A real market will have multiple costumers to compete with we really only have one.
(3) There is a conflict between what the costumer wants and who the lab really serves which is the American people. The costumer wants
to survive with as little work as possible for themselves. The American people would want the labs to be in top shape to deliver the best science for national needs.
(4) All the standard checks and balances of the real corporate world are absence. For example real corporations are in constant competition with other corporations which will in principle force improvements over time. We compete with no one.
(5) Our profit is fixed, so the corporation only has to do what it needs to for this profit. If there are other ways to improve there is no incentive to do so. This again is in contrast with real corporations.
(6) With only one costumer it can pay to create special jobs and perks for the costumer that can pay off and allow the contract to be extended. In a real corporation since there will be many costumers this strategy is not worth it.
(7) Basically capitalism works only works statically which means you need large numbers, i.e large numbers of competing corporations
and large numbers of costumers. We have neither. The whole point of crony capitalism is to violate the rules of capitalism. Private is not always better. For example the Mafia is private but it is not better.