How are the furloughs going to affect the retaining of the talent at LLNS?
Anonymous said...
In todays world where there are no jobs and foreign nationals are coming into America to take your jobs my bet is no one will leave. They'll just take their 20% cut in pay, buy less, cut services and hang on until the next RIF.
42 comments:
I think a furlough is to prevent lay-offs.
Many big tech firms have furlough policies for tough time. And recall that UC did it on academic campus not that long ago.
Not like the Lab has a huge line of credit. Better a bit of pain to go around than RIF just to get through a short term funding gap.
The NNSA "science" labs are in terminal decline. Get use to it or plan to get out. It's not going to get any better, only worse.
Sorry to have to say this but anyone who has eyes and ears that work should know all this by now.
Won't a 20% cut in pay have a big effect on future pension payouts? It would seem like it would greatly lower them, especially for those employees getting close to retirement.
Won't a 20% cut in pay have a big effect on future pension payouts?
Well yes, but that was just a number the one poster pulled out of their back pocket.
I am equally confident that a 20% raise in pay will have a big effect on future pension payouts. Feel better?
December 1, 2012 8:12 PM What makes you think LLNL lack of funding is short term unless you think four years ( 2016 ) is short term. Do you folks have any idea of how this 20% pay cut is going to effect your retirment and SS check at 62 or 65. Furlough's are just another means of the company cutting your throat while that make out like fat rats and then get bonus checks for doing such a sheeet hot job. LLNL cuts are not short term. Once they find out they can live with the research labs they wil not come back, period.
December 1, 2012 10:17 PM Unless you are ULM you are never going to see a 20% payraise, not now, not ever.
my guess is the tcp2 folks will go first. LLNS needs the TCP1 folks in the system to keep making those 5% "contributions" to keep the plan solvent. Oh yeah, 7% next year. Can't kill the goose laying the golden eggs....
December 2, 2012 12:39 PM TCP-2 first to go. Persoanlly I hope so. You're probably correct about TCP-2people going first since they're the oldest and wisest of the 4,000 7% donator's with a coming 20% cut in pay bunch that'll definately affect their SS and final pension $$. Combine all this with no pay rasie for the last three years and LLNS has a winner, "for them". We'll see my friend, we'll see..
What kind of furloughs have been announced?
The quality of commentary in the thread is awful.
Baseless speculation, something that might be heard on a school playground.
December 2, 2012 10:26 AM: Who announced a 20% pay cut? This figure keeps getting repeated on this thread like it is inscribed in stone some place.
December 1, 2012 8:12 PM
The furloughs are in the new lay off policy
"The quality of commentary in the thread is awful.
Baseless speculation, something that might be heard on a school playground.
December 2, 2012 4:35 PM
December 2, 2012 10:26 AM: Who announced a 20% pay cut? This figure keeps getting repeated on this thread like it is inscribed in stone some place."
Have you heard what the new acting LLNL security management is saying?
Is this going the way of the Ed Moses rumors thread?
Have you heard what the new acting LLNL security management is saying?
December 3, 2012 5:51 AM
No, do tell.
The furlough policy was probably put in place for a variety of reasons, but the most obvious is that if the US goes over the fiscal cliff, LLNL will get something like a 10% cut immediately. It is thought to be short-lived, but that is not guaranteed. So what to do?
You can have a RIF, which would be a shame if it turned out to be short-lived funding redcution.
Or you can have a furlough to avoid making the problem worse, if it turns out to be long-term, while buying time.
So the "reduction in salary" might be (10%/12) * number of months in force.
Seems like a reasonable response to difficult funding news from DC.
And those who don't like it can use their furlough days to interview for jobs elsewhere.
On the Federal side, no furloughs but there is a move to reduce Feds also. The is from Neile at HQ:
The NNSA of the future will look different than our enterprise does today. It should. The work we do, the tools we have and the conditions we face are constantly evolving. To meet our mission, NNSA must be ahead of the change curve, building the right mix of people and positions.
In this post, I wanted to highlight a few specific steps we’re taking to restructure our workforce through the realignment of resources and jobs. These efforts include:
§ Reengineering NNSA’s student employment programs. NNSA combined the best attributes of the Future Leaders Program and the Nonproliferation Graduate Fellows Program to form the NNSA Graduate Program to attract and develop the next generation of NNSA employees.
§ Development of the OneLeadership Initiative. Utilizing the training and detail assignment opportunities offered under the OneLeadership Initiative employees can improve their skills to advance in their field of expertise or explore other career opportunities.
§ Creating a hiring review board to further optimize NNSA’s current recruitment and hiring efforts. Staffed by a rotating team of SES leaders, the hiring review board is involved in all recruitment actions, including backfills that could increase NNSA’s current on-board levels. The review board also pushes managers to think through their staffing needs in light of future goals and opportunities, and holds them accountable for hiring the right skill sets in the right categories and at the appropriate grade structure for tomorrow’s work as well as today’s.
§ Offering Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) to interested employees. If you are interested in VERA, contact your Employee Benefits Consultant as soon as possible to review what the program will mean for you –the program is only available through December 31st, so act now if you’re interested!
§ Offering the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP) for employees, pending Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approval. NNSA submitted a VSIP plan to OPM on October 26th. OPM is reviewing our proposal and will approve our plan, ask for changes or deny our request within the next few weeks.
We will alert all employees to OPM’s decision as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you are interested in VSIP, talk with your Employee Benefits Consultant and make sure you understand the program’s details. Armed with accurate information, you can then review your finances and talk with your family and loved ones about VSIP and if it’s right for you.
VERA, VSIP, the hiring review board and the programs I mentioned above, all have a single purpose – to create and support an agile, adaptive workforce ready for the future.
Neile
Who is "Neile"?
"Who is "Neile"?
That would be Neile Miller, Tom D's deputy.
http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/neilemiller082410
'VERA, VSIP, the hiring review board and the programs I mentioned above, all have a single purpose – to create and support an agile, adaptive workforce ready for the future." ( Neile Miller )
Translation: We need to get rid of more staff cluttering up the hallways so that management will feel more secure and less at risk with their high paying positions. Please consider committing "Employment Hari-Kari" during this deep, long term economic depression and have nice day! Your friendly NNSA management.
There has been no posting of information or even an original link to the supposed "furlough" policy. I think it does not exist, and this thread is based on nothing. Anyone dispute that? With evidence?
The introduction of furlough policy to LLNL is in the recent changes to our policy manual.
We can't post a link because it's internal only. Just go to internal LLNL HR website or read the recent newsline articles, emails, etc etc.
Hey "thread based on nothing" guy...get your nose outta the lab equipment and read:
- newsline
- multiple emails from powers that be
- Q&A session with Art Wong
- big section on HR website
- etc
....or just read the PPM and search for "furlough"
Hey "thread based on nothing" guy...get your nose outta the lab equipment and read:
December 4, 2012 9:07 PM
You seem to be forgetting that most readers here don't know or care anything about LLNL, but are LANL-focused.
Oh, ok, I guess I was thrown off by the LLNL in the blog name.
LANL should get their own blog to discuss their own internal stuff.
I appreciate them cross-posting things of mutual interest, but all of this "ex-LLNL people are ruining LANL" venting is a waste of typing.
Wake up LANL! The same thing would be happening to you regardless of who was nominally "leading" you.
Just like the same crap that happened to you guys 3 years before us, is now happening to us at LLNL. Irrespective of who our leaders are. Bigger patterns are in motion, the leadership is irrelevant (by design).
Bigger patterns are in motion, the leadership is irrelevant (by design).
December 6, 2012 10:43 AM
Sorry, but it goes much further than that. Having been retired from LANL for some years now, I can state from personal experience out in "the world" that it is not the Labs' leadership that is irrelevant, it is the Labs themselves. Much more than in the past, real folks (plain old US citizens with jobs, families, and real-world worries) are unfamiliar with the concept of a nuclear weapons laboratory. Sure, they realize that some countries including the US have nuclear weapons, and vaguely understand that is is bad when US adversaries get them, but I don't know of anyone not connected to the NWC in some way, who thinks nukes are worth a moment's thought on their part. The Labs are just not part of the real world to them. Most think all nuclear weapon-related things are under the control of the Department of Defense in some way. They couldn't care less about DOE, NNSA, Los Alamos, or Livermore. Once you spend some time away, you realize that if those entities simply disappeared off the face of the earth, statistically speaking, no one would notice. The number of people who care about the issues raised on this blog is statistically insignificant. The whole thing is "a waste of typing."
That's an interesting, and sobering, thought, from several perspectives.
Thanks for an excellent contribution!
December 4, 2012 6:09 PM If LLNS or NNSA were truly interested in downsizing or giving any consideration to its people they'd do a VSIP like they did in the old days of a 3 & 3 and then sit back and watch 50% of the lab go bye bye in the first week. Problem resolved for all the young and old.
December 4, 2012 6:09 PM If LLNS or NNSA were truly interested in downsizing or giving any consideration to its people they'd do a VSIP like they did in the old days of a 3 & 3 and then sit back and watch 50% of the lab go bye bye in the first week. Problem resolved for all the young and old.
They have no consideration of the staff. Witness the past 5 years.
They're trying to do it on the cheap, make the environment so bad that people "self deport"...
We need to send Tomas back to Mexico or Uraguay or wherever his place of origin, rather than reward him with a golden parachute for what he did at sc. Even worse that outrageous photos his "friends" took got out in circulation. Strip his citizenship and apply the pressure on him to self deport also.
Whatever Tomas did at SC 2011 I doubt would be grounds to take his citizenship. Do you really want to live in a country like that?
Tomas (who I believe is from Spain, and which is irrelevant) is enough of a major jerk that you don't need to muddy the water with your racism. Let his actions and decisions do him in (which it appears they have).
The dude is European? No way! He was a total "I'm a disadvantaged minority who struggled his way out of poverty" poster boy. Wtf? Are you saying he is of Latin American descent who later lived in slain, then the US? Something not right here.
Wasn't some of hiis underlings involved with that whole sc scandal? I assume nnsa didn't care and wasn't a factor in his removal because obviously those guys are still at the lab getting promos and kudos.
Whether he's from Spain, or Mexico, or timbuku is irrelevant.
What ever he did (or did not do) is what he should go down for (and appears to have). I severely dislike the guy, but that's due to his actions not his ethnic background.
No wonder no minorities every stick it out at LLNL, your racism is appalling.
typo, meant to say:
...No wonder no minorities ever stick it out at LLNL, your racism is appalling.
Dude, I'm black engineer, and I'm the one who asked. And I asked because he was being portrayed in a way that was offensive after I learned he wasn't even a disadvantaged minority at all. Thats the kind of crap that makes my life so hard because people like you go defending that kind of stuff like you just did twice here. So I would hold off on throwing around the "you're a racist" bit. I don't know why you're even getting off that way. Is affirmative action also racism in your book?
And another thing, I wouldn't stay at the lab but not because of the "racism" that you so allege by people like myself, but the fact is, I don't sip the kool-aid and probably alot of other minorities don't sip the kool-aid either. I know whats going down in a place like LLNL. No point wasting my time at a dead-end workplace either.
I see where this is going. Yeah, as the previous poster said, the guy shouting racism and the question as to whether he also thinks that affirmative action is also racism. Even in a lab full of highly educated PhDs.. you find this type of deeply ingrained ignorance.
Don't mind that "you're racist" poster. Not all of us at the lab are that ignorant. I'm asian, and I too found that whole thing about Tomas being a "minority" offensive too.
Again and geting this back on track I will say;
If LLNS or NNSA were truly interested in downsizing or giving any consideration to its people they'd do a VSIP like they did in the old days of a 3 & 3 and then sit back and watch 50% of the lab go bye bye in the first week. Problem resolved for all the young and old.
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