Monday, November 25, 2013
Employee Relations
All managers I have dealt with in PLS are abusive....However, remember they are guided by Employee Relations. They are unprofessional and have lost millions for the laboratory. If we actually had competent people in Employee Relations this would not happen. My advice is fire everyone in Employee Relations and find people who will hold abusive manager and this will save the laboratory millions of dollars in lawsuits.
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November 24, 2013 at 6:27 PM
You must realize that ER does absolutely nothing that they are not told to do by LLNS upper management. Management abuse of employees comes from the top. Is is their corporate culture. Live with it or leave.
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November 24, 2013 at 7:14 PM
Frankly ER has no reason to exist at LLNS.
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33 comments:
Please list the LLNS titles (not by name) you believe to be "employee relations".
I think the above bloggers meant Staff Relations. There is also an office on site called Employees Relations. Employees initiate contact with ER but when Staff Relations initiate contact with a particular employee, this particular employee better call his lawyer before going to Staff Relations.
Many LLNS Managers have thrown their coworkers under the bus. Staff Relations is just their short term ethical novocaine while doing so, but it doesn't last long. The "I was only doing what I was told" line is a poor excuse for someone in a leadership position.
The inappropriate behavior doesn't only happen in LLNS. This is also common in Sandia and LANL.
From a previous post:
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/05/hey-lanl-and-sandia.html?showComment=1368229152210#c5184911644985578339
Does HR need to be a directorate? Seems a bit much for a piece of operations.
You can look up Employee Relations, they are people you can go to if you want to discuss employment-related issues in confidence. The confidence part is undoubtedly true, but their responses will be guided by their main goal, which is to protect LLNS. Staff Relations deals with formal complaints, like for discrimination or harrassment - and right, if they contact you, worry.
Beware of Staff Relations and the undisclosed extended family of subservient spokes on the Staff Relations wheel.
Seek out an employment attorney if you have a serious job or career threatening concern.
"All managers I have dealt with in PLS are abusive"
I agree and many other PLS employees (that I know)would agree with you. There was one PLS manager who was "nice" but had no back bone to even try to defend his employee. The rest of thees WERE nice until Staff Relations got involve, then they turned coat. Remember they are there for their own paychecks too. Looking after employees are not their priorities. Be careful who you talk to and what you say. PLS's walls have ears.
Staff Relations are all hired lawyers out to protect LLNS from being dragged LLNS into court or in front of US DOL OFCCP. Don't believe that? try contacting them about what you perceive as discrimination or mistreatment. They aren't here to help YOU.
Yes Staff Relations is simply LLNS Management legal defense team. If you have a supportable case with material documentation, Staff Relations will make every attempt to delay or derail it.
Don't give them the chance, but continue to document your experiences.
Despite all the protective language, the OFCCP is useless in practice and should either reform or be dismantled. To LLNS, the OFCCP is irrelevant.
If you have seriousness diversity questions, the highly paid LLNS Diversity/Equal Opportunity Manager and our employee "shepherd", (in his 3 piece suit), will promptly redirect your concerns to Staff Relations.
The LLNS Senior HR Manager will close his door to your concerns too. On his door reads a sign, "out to lunch
on all the written employment guidelines I am responsible to monitor and enforce. Please see Staff Relations".
Get the picture? Find an employment/wrongful dismissal attorney. The failure of those above will be legally flushed out in court.
It can be helpful to go through the process if you feel you have been discriminated against or wronged in some way that can be grounded in the rules. You almost certainly will not win unless it is blatant and documentable, so that SR decides it is safer (for LLNS) to hang someone than to stonewall. But you will have demonstrated that you have gone through the official procedures, so if it comes to a lawsuit you will be in a better position.
Yes I agree you will have demonstrated that you went through the internal process in good faith and that will help your case in court in the long run after you are RIFed or fired.
In the short run, against LLNS written non-retaliation policy, knowledge of your internal grievance(s) will move like a wild fire through LLNS Management
poisoning the well for lateral or promotional positions without an opportunity for you to defend yourself. If your job is "solid" maybe filing a formal grievance won't hurt. Just maybe.
If your an EIT, EBA, or on that track, remember most assignments are not *formally posted, so managers that get wind of your grievance or support the management "club" will feel they have no motive or "skin in the game" to offer an assignment to you, qualified or not, because they are counting on the fact you will not learn of those assignments. No easily acquired paper trail they believe.
*Interestingly in March of 2012 the OFCCP found LLNS in violation of DOL requirements by assigning an employee to an acting manager position without a formal posting. " Informal mediation" was to follow to correct the LLNS employment practice between the OFCCP and LLNS. Did it? What was changed?
From the looks of 2012-2013 EIT and EBA employees flowing into new unposted
positions, no material posting requirements were adopted. The EIT and EBA "brokers" are in place for 30,000 ft. observers
and are otherwise useless.
If you invoke a FOIA for the 2012 OFCCP found LLNS violations and remedies, you will receive a letter from the OFCCP informing you that the release of such information
first requires the approval of LLNS before the requested data can be released. Can you believe this? As said in a previous comment, the OFCCP is irrelevant and LLNS does what it wants to.
Get an attorney if you have a serious employment problem with LLNS.
Get an attorney if you have a serious employment problem with LLNS.
November 28, 2013 at 1:48 PM
Good idea when the problems are serious. Until you get your own lawyer and let them know it, they'll believe they can get away with just about anything in terms of retaliation against targeted "trouble-makers". Having your own attorney in your corner sobers them up real fast!
You guys aren't playing fair! I'm taken my marbles and I'm going home. I'm going to get a lawyer and show you. You'll see you'll get yours! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHHA! Keep crying people that helps.
POS
How many more LLNS FTE and Akima employees were let go (out the gate) over the last 2-4 weeks? What is the current size of the ETA + EBA pool and is that population stabilizing?
EIT not ETA
December 4, 2013 at 11:35 AM:
A little silly to expect real answers to those questions on this blog. Rumors? Wild-ass guesses? Meaningless anecdotal observations? Guaranteed.
Not silly at all. Many on this blog work at LLNS. Besides, I'd prefer on the ground hallway "observations" over the self serving "cricket, cricket" from the leadership team.
Not silly at all. Many on this blog work at LLNS.
December 4, 2013 at 9:20 PM
Exactly the people from whom you'll get meaningless information. If you think "hallway observations" are accurate data in this instance, you are not a scientist. If you want real data, ask HR your questions. If they refuse to answer, that is your indication that no one will be able to tell you the real answers. If the data were public, you'd be able to get it easily. If it isn't, you won't be able to get reliable data at all. Sounds like your curiosity will be satisfied with rumors and anecdotes. Such is the status of serious intellectual inquiry at LLNL these days. Sad.
"If you want real data, ask HR your questions."
Good joke. You are kidding, right?
Sound like an afraid lab manager that doesn't want the
light on him or his pals, so he minimizes the word "on the street". Very typical.
Ask LLNS corporate HR your questions for "real data"? What are you smoking Mr. or Dr. Scientist?
Best lines of information are informal talks with people who know things, if you know them well enough that they will tell you what they know. Failing that, you can hope that those people post what they heard from their connected friends someplace like this. Talking to someone you don't know in HR is a complete waste of time, because they will only tell you what you can already read in newsline. Sometimes a scientific approach is worthless, but many of us scientists never learn this life lesson.
We are not talking about dinosaur fossils. The "scientific approach" does not work well if the "subject matter" is elusive or acts with an opposing agenda. Openly asking logical questions in the politically charged LLNS environment can impact the questioner's career. The legal deposition phase, the road LLNS is on (again) should flush out the answers to these questions and others with a systematic approach. A blog is a place where these questions emerge when you have "cricket, cricket" or stonewalling from your other potential sources of information.
Willingness to accept and repeat information that has not been confirmed gets journalists fired. Rightly so. At least use the "two sources" rule before you leap off a cliff based on someone else's fantasy.
Don't EVER trust HR. Keep all emails and hard copy notes. Record dates and times and details of conversations with anyone in HR and management. Don't fall for the "lets discuss this over coffee" if you have the option to get information in writing instead. Get everything in writing. The written word may be your only effective defense against a corrupt management.
HR, ER, SHRM, none have ever been helpful or useful for the employees (or particularly accurate).
Save all your correspondences with HR/SHRM and document your failed attempts to receive a replying from that team.
A management that is unwilling to commit anything to writing is a management that has something to hide, giving you more reason to insist on everything in writing.
"...A management that is unwilling to commit anything to writing is a management that has something to hide, giving you more reason to insist on everything in writing..."
Very very true here at LLNS.
Sandian managers are just as bad. A low quality valueless management structure incapable of acting in a way that enables them to commit explanations of their "decisions" into writing.
There are "official polices" and then there are the real policies that are never committed to writing that are used througout lab management.
Never become confused about which type of policies carry clout with upper management. The "official policies" are only used as window dressing.
Anonymous said...
Sandian managers are just as bad. A low quality valueless management structure incapable of acting in a way that enables them to commit explanations of their "decisions" into writing.
December 8, 2013 at 12:57 PM
Not only are the Sandia managers bad, they spend stuff on wasteful trips!
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