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Sunday, January 27, 2013
RIF & furloughs
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WARN Act website, only lists 42 new LLNL layoffs (SPOA) on top of the 126 known layoffs (SPOA).
http://acwib.rkswebs.com/
We don't want any stinking Furloughs . We want a VSIP where they give about $80K to everyone who is eligible and get rid of all the old people who can retire therefore making jobs for the old. What the hell is wrong with NNSA? Most of you should realize for every person they get rid of it saves them ~ $300K of which they will use for experiments and parts. They can then work the rest OT and get a lot more bang for the buck since OT cost them less than a FTE or even a contract person. Personally I wish they do a VSIP, give each old person $80K into their 401k and get rid of about 50% of the work force by the end of next week. Such and easy cure but NNSA is soooo stupid it’s unreal.
Such and easy cure but NNSA is soooo stupid it’s unreal.
January 27, 2013 at 9:51 AM
Right. I assume you're not a lawyer. Or a knowledgeable person of any type.
"Get rid of the old people"... therefore making jobs for the old? You sound like the problem and not so much the solution......
At SNL, I wish they would just get out the damn axe already and chop off 5-10% of employees and managers. This slow death is worse than a quick one.
Rifs have already started! last week LLNS released SL and FlEX terms across the lab to cover budget short falls. furloughs will start in march with all aws work weeks being canceled and pay day fridays will be the furlough days.
The EBA's will hit the gate around march and remember the eba list is the layoff list
January 27, 2013 at 7:04 PM
Wonderful, another pay cut. They should do what January 27, 2013 at 9:51 AM said and get this over with instead of these paycuts for the next four years or more.
Some details of the plan being considered:
- 10% *salary* cut (whacks you in the HAPC - will take 3 yrs after 10% cut is restored (likely Sept 30 best case) to recover your HAPC in the pension).
- 2 Furlough Days per month (whacks you in YOS -- no way to recover, except work longer).
- Cancel Variable Compensation Program (VCP) - costs you cash.
- No buy out plan (they're not going to pay you to leave...they favor self-deportation...a layoff with no cost to them or media/political attention)
Of course that's on top of the 7% pension pay-in this year.
And, of course, they're exempting the high up management from the furlough days (protecting their own YOS, of course!!!) because they're too critical to miss work.
All of this has been designed to have the "least impact on employee benefits".
Huh??? How Orwellian... It's precisely designed to hit employees in the hardest way possible and force them to self-deport.
How Orwellian... It's precisely designed to hit employees in the hardest way possible and force them to self-deport.
January 28, 2013 at 11:48 AM
How stupid of employees to still have not gotten the message: Get the hell out! You're not needed or wanted, you're unhappy, things are not going to get better, and the grass is definitely greener elsewhere. WTF is it going to take for you folks to understand that you are DONE? Give it up and move on - the only rational choice.
Incredibly disingenuous of Parney to characterize this as having "least impact on employee benefits".
It's clearly the opposite.
It will be interesting when Parney/LLNS:
"communicate to you as quickly as possible what actions our Laboratory might take, along with the reasoning."
The reasoning should be a fascinating load of hogwash and doublespeak.
The reasoning should be a fascinating load of hogwash and doublespeak.
January 28, 2013 at 2:30 PM
NO ONE CARES. It's amazing and frightening what doomed people will consider "fascinating." Get a clue.
Incredibly disingenuous of Parney to characterize this as having "least impact on employee benefits".
Least impact would be nothing happens. Next least perhaps is most folks are untouched and X number of employees are RIF-ed. I think the notion is to spread the pain, and see if any major fiscal disruption is temporary.
Please lay out the ingenuous options.
Good Lord. The managers are being told to take the 10% hit without compensatory time off, and some idiot translates that into a YOS benefit. Pathological. The other option, for what would be a temporary funding reduction, is a layoff. Pretty dumb. Why would Parney RIF people for what might be a 3 or 4 month problem?? He said that this was based on the idea of a temporary reduction. If it is seen to be permanent then a furlough makes little sense, and a VSP would be better.
Why did Parney take this job? He is not a turnaround expert, and the mandate Is clearly not to manage a turnaround and ensure long term viability of the lab. It looks like Parney is Ed's puppet. Too bad. You can't shake that kind of reputation for the next move. Basically he will have to live off of a golden parachute if Ped does not achieve ignition soon.
Parney should really have solicited input on this plan. There are many impacts he doesn't understand.
This is going to be more than a 3-4 month thing. Likely to go to 2014. Republicans are digging in to get their cuts via 1 of these 3 leverage points opportunities coming up.
There will be no "compensatory time off"...we've made commitments to sponsors, our relationships with those sponsors are at stake, and all good project managers / tech people will just work the time for free to make deliverables.
I liked the lab a lot better when we worked like hell to get stuff done and UC took care of good benefits and working out smart plans to take care of stuff like this.
Why do they have to lower salaries (thereby reducing HAPC) vs just keeping salaries (and HAPC) as is and just furloughing us???
They don't really seem to be doing this in a well thought out manner.
Or at best, not explaining it very well. What "benefits" did they preserve by doing it this way?
Idea: ask/encourage people who have a bunch of time off saved up to take that vacation now! Spend some time with the grandkids.
Parney wrecked his chances for his next move. He is clearly going down with the ship that he chose not to help right. Instead he has doubled down on LIFE the big loser program. He is clearly not c-suite material. Too bad for him. He is even screwing up personnel policy communications. What the hell is wrong with him?
Why would Parney RIF people for what might be a 3 or 4 month problem??
You mean a 4 year problem correct? These cuts are for 4 consecutive years and can be extened after that if this BS doesn't work. It is going to be just like your pay freezes, dilbets!
Any word on a class action lawsuit against LLNS for the way many are predetermined to be on EBA and even poisoned from projects that could have gotten them off? They are manipulating and abusing the performance appraisal process also to help management vindictivelt purge people that management doesn't like. The problem is that is against the law and against LLNS' own policies. Theis amounts to a lawsuit with punitive damages when problems, inconsistencies and abuses in this past years PA process is revealed. Lab letting go of an EBA? They will be very selective, letting go those who they think are the least likely to sue.
Those on EBA should only be sharing their detailed information with their lawyers, not with the Internet. Document everything. Good luck and keep strong and true to yourself.
I think his point was that he was planning to retire in the near-ish future and this 10% reduction in salary would require him to stay a full 3 years after the 10% reduction was rescinded in order to fully capture any future gains (ie it takes 3 years for the gains to fully bake into your HAPC).
He's right about that.
I guess it all comes down to whether this is going to be a couple of month thing or if this is going to be a years long thing, or even worse from a pension perspective, a thing they do every couple of years and you will never be able to full bake your future gains by getting 36 continuous months at your new salary.
With 3% raises going out next week, I can see how this HAPC concern is on people's minds.
Instead of waiting 35 months (due to retroactive to Jan 1) for this raise to bake into people's pensions, they will have to wait 3 years + however long the furlough goes on for.
Also, anytime they are furloughed again in the next 36 months, the clock starts all over again.
This technique of not allowing HAPC to bake was a common tactic in corporate america in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if the courts ever ruled against it. In this case, with the likely ongoing CR, debt ceiling, budget, etc battles its very conceivable this furlough thing could keep happening at least once every 36 months for quite awhile. He could be making significantly more a few years from now and have NONE of it counted in his pension.
Definitely something to keep an eye on as all of this furlough stuff plays out.
TCP2ers are taking it in the shorts on this too!
Decrease in pay = decrease in our TCP2 payment into 401k.
Just looked it up, the guy's right:
"Highest Average Plan Compensation (HAPC) – your highest average monthly
full-time equivalent plan compensation during the 36 continuous months as an active member of the Plan and/or an active participant in UCRP"
Keyword: "continuous"
Interesting...good info.
This will be a dis-incentive for future near-retirees to take any sort of a VSP.
Not very strategic of LLNL management.
Whole plan doesn't seem very well designed on various levels.
Parney being new to LLNL (and not himself personally in the pension) doesn't understand the issues he's creating.
So, by that logic (thanks for clear explanation of how HAPC works), he will be losing out on a portion of the previous 3 raises which he has "baking" as well. Those raises don't count until he can work 36 months uninterrupted by a furlough or other event temporarily reducing his salary.
Recommended Reading on all these types of pension games:
"Retirement Heist"
Ellen E. Schultz
Simple solution to all this is to just let people choose to either do the salary reduction/furlough option or agree to take 2 days vac per month for the furlough period. QED
UC was so much more thoughtful and creative about stuff like this.
Simple solution to all this is to just let people choose to either do the salary reduction/furlough option or agree to take 2 days vac per month for the furlough period. QED
January 29, 2013 at 8:04 PM
Simplest solution: Just RIF all the people you need to to make the budget work, and be done with it. Make the RIFs based on performance only, to minimize the need for further hiring if good people leave. No VSIP, no furloughs, no hours reductions. Keep it real and keep it focused on getting the work done most efficiently. It is mindboggling the contortions the labs go to to keep from appearing what they are: profit-driven enterprises. Is there anyone left working for the labs that doesn't fully understand that?? Get a clue: UC is never coming back. Get over it.
7:48am: How has Parney doubled down on LIFE? Last I heard he cut their LDRD budget by $2M and told them another $2M was coming off in 2014.
"Retirement Heist" - Ellen E. Schultz (6:26 PM)
Great book. I heard an interview with Ellen Schultz about a year ago and was shocked to learn what is really happening across American in the corporate board rooms against employee pensions and benefits. The greed and immoral behavior seen at the top of corporate America is disgusting!
The greed and immoral behavior seen at the top of corporate America is disgusting!
January 30, 2013 at 8:51 PM
Because they have finally realized that to promise employees a pension in the economic situation of the past decade is ridiculous? Yeah. Right. If you are as valuable to the company as you think you are, your compensation will leave you more than enough to save a generous amount for retirement. Unless you chose to live way above your (actual) means, and owe much more than you can afford to repay. Or perhaps you have misjudged your value to the company? It's all abut the consequences of your life decisions.
If Ed is still giving his fusion-plant-in-10-years bullshit then what Ped does with LDRD is irrelevant. Redirecting funds from LIFE to ignition studies is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Had funds been redirected to actually build a credible EoS capability for example (eg hiring the right people and firing the current team and lead) then i might start believing that Ped is not doubling down on LIFE.
Get back on the subject, This post is about time off W/O pay. Now you have to worry about if there is going to any pay after you retire. TCP_1er's because the agency that was to back your plan is going broke and so is PBGC. Now what?
Financial Times - January 30, 2013
US pension insurer warns of rising deficit
By Norma Cohen, Demography Correspondent
The finances of the US’s multi-employer pension schemes have deteriorated so quickly over the past year that the body that insures them will almost certainly run out of cash in 20 years, according to a new report.
The chances of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation – the publicly created but privately funded body that insures the nation’s occupational pension schemes – going bust went from 1 in 3 at the end of 2011 to more than 9 in 10 by the end of 2012, a report prepared for the PBGC and released on Tuesday said.
The woes of the PBGC are common to pension schemes– and their insurers – in industrialised economies where defined benefit pension schemes form a significant portion of retirement benefit. Weak returns on assets after the 2008 financial crisis meant schemes did not earn as much as they expected, while low bond yields gave rise to much larger calculations of deficits. However, the PBGC noted that the deterioration in the funding status for pension schemes financed by groups of employers was down to a range of factors, one of which was limits on the insurer’s ability to force employers to pay their fair share of premiums.
I guessing the bigwigs at the top knew this and also knew if they got theirs first they'd be grandfathered in to keep it but those who wait or can't retire they'll just have to hope the plan doesn't go bye-bye before they can start to draw.
Oh what the hell. Lets just raise the employees contributions to 15% and increase that by 5% a year for the next four years. I wonder if TCP-1 is going to hell because Parney did not fund the $80M + he was supposed to gambling the economy was going to get better until Obama's reign. NOT! and it will not as long as you have santa clause funding those who don't work or say, "you owes me". Regardless, it was a bad gamble Parney and now you're all going to suffer for it. You should have put the money in the retirement plan instead of using it for experiments.
Fellow employees I've talked to who took TCP1 aren't worried (and actually the fact that PBGC is having problems may be a good thing since nobody wanted that option anyway). The only ones who seem to be certain TCP1 will fail are the ones who took TCP2. Any concerns should be for both plans; we're in the same boat like it or not.
January 29, 2013 at 8:04 PM said:
"Simplest solution: Just RIF all the people you need to to make the budget work, and be done with it. Make the RIFs based on performance only, to minimize the need for further hiring if good people leave. No VSIP, no furloughs, no hours reductions. Keep it real and keep it focused on getting the work done most efficiently."
I think this is the best solution I have heard so far. Makes perfect sense to me. Most private companies do that all the time. It is all about surviving in a tough market, performance and keeping the best talent for moving forward.
First was the pension contribution at 5/7 instead of the 2/4, and now with the impending furlough, many employees are quietly consulting with bankruptcy attorneys.
Some are consulting attorneys for other reasons as well.
Some are consulting attorneys for other reasons as well.
February 4, 2013 at 12:21 AM
A lot of attorneys will be making lots of money. Good for them. Bad for lab employees, who will be losing ots of money.
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