Anonymous said...
I joined UC (LLNL) 28 years ago believing that medical benefits for my family would be provided. With my three children, two recently turning 23, and all still in college (one working on a Ph.D.), and with the less than inflation raises I have gotten the past few years, I was lucky to be able to pay their COBRA continuation coverage. On December 26, I received a letter from Kaiser letting me know that "your COBRA group coverage for you and your covered dependents is scheduled to end at 12:01 a.m. on 01/01/2008 (unless you become ineligible sooner)".
LLNS management knows we are under a great deal of stress right now. Good management would have at least given a warning before letting my wife receive such a timely and alarming letter. Who is in charge of the benefits office these days (and how much do they make)?
Of course there are phone numbers in the letters, and no one in the office to answer them. There is a web site, where you can enter your children's personal info: SSN and DOB. And all the usual scary disclaimers about how coverage can be canceled "retroactive"! But with the deadline approaching we decided to do it, to sign up, getting a $40/mo increase for each participant. Merry Christmas!
What a lousy decision I made 28 years ago. What a lousy recruiter I would make for LLNL today.
13 comments:
The most important benefit one can have is medical coverage, during employment and surely upon retirement "for life". However having observed everything that LLNS has done since their take over I'm going to wager that medical coverage will be the first benefit to go upon termination of employement, and here's why I say this.
The first change we're going to see is a reduction in coverage with an increase in cost to the employee
The second change that will come shortly is this. LLNS will offer medial coverage while you're employed but upon termination all medical cover will cease, leaving you with no choice but to work until you are 65 and eligible for medicare / medical what every you income warrants.
Their reason to do this is simple.
The longer they can get you to stay employed the less time they'll have to pay you a pension. = ( cost savings )
The longer they can keep you on the job the greater chance you'll die before you get to collect. = ( cost savings)
Again, if you die on the job you wouldn't have had time to take survivors benefits and instead of your spouse getting 100% of you base pay she'll only get 25% of you base pay for the rest of their life. Again = (cost savings )
If you'll just take the time to think all of these issues out you'll soon get the big pictures. It's all based on how can the company get the "most" out of you for the "lease" outlay from them. They are NOT on your side nor do they care about your welfare.
You are simply a number on a computer printout and a disposable commodity at their whim.
Think before you dedicate your life for the cause and make every plan from this day on, is "all about you"_NOT_ "them".
Neither the original post nor the response seem to make any sense. What are people talking about or where did they learn to write?
Also, if you are losing COBRA coverage, that is not the Lab's fault. Those are government rules for the entire population of the country.
I am not on LLNS' side. I recently quit and moved on rather than put up with the way things are. BUT, everything that happens to you is not LLNS' fault. Are they going to be blamed for taxes and the weather next?
December 31, 2007 3:55 PM
You shouldn't have quit. You would have made a great LLNS mascot. Just think, you too could have been making $410K a year. You missed your calling. Have a good day.
Oh and BTW, the two enties make perfectly good sense if you'd think about LLNS motives and what they are being paid to do.
Can you say hatchetmen and cost cuttng at all cost with lack of consideration for anyone.
To clarify things, are you too young to receive retirement medical insurance ?
"To clarify things, are you too young to receive retirement medical insurance ?"
To clarify things. Only if LLNS continues to offer medical insurance to retirees. If LLNS decides to only offer medical coverage to its employees while they're are employeed and not afterwards, everyone will be working until they are 65, unless they're ULM.
Do you really think LLNS wouldn't do this if they were given a chance.
No medical coverage to retirees is a tremendous cost savings and nothing but browny points would be given to them for puling this off.
You didn't answer my question. Are you too young to retire and get medical ?
I agree with 3:55Pm -- both the original post and the first comment were really confusing.
COBRA coverage is for people who are no longer eligible for the LLNL medical coverage -- as all dependent children are at 23 (some sooner, if they are not in school, as I recall). COBRA is an arrangement between the insurance company and the individual governed under federal regs completely disconnected from LLNL's past, current, or future benefits plan.
If your kids are age 23 and under COBRA, then this whole situation all began under UC, so how do you get to play the "LLNS screwed me" card anyway?
So the poster's issue is with Kaiser (who has a well-deserved reputation for customer-friendly service already [sarcasm intended]), as best as I can tell. How do you expect LLNL to be involved with this, or deserve the blame?
"If your kids are age 23 and under COBRA, then this whole situation all began under UC, so how do you get to play the "LLNS screwed me" card anyway?"
LLNS can eat crap as far as I'm concerned. We didn't need them then and we sure as heck don't need them now.
Most colleges have fairly reasonable insurance available for students- you can probably do much better than LLNL Cobra prices... Also copays lower- because students aren't on the expensive new drugs. Check out your options.
Retirement medical coverage will probably be the next benefit to go. NNSA is extremely eager to see this benefit dropped for lab workers so LLNS will get right on it for them.
You'll only be given access to retirement medical if you pay the full premium cost. This will affect both current retirees and those who plan to retire in the future.
LLNS will justify this with the "substantially equivalent" clause. Since almost all US corporations are dropping retirement medical coverage, they'll say they also need to drop it so that LLNL can remain "substantially equivalent" with their worker benefits.
Isn't that wonderful. We can spend $11B a month on a war to protect a bunch of sand turds from killing themselves over a religious belief or holy land that should have been turned into a international park of which they could have charged admission fees to visit, but we can't provide medical coverage to our own people.
I wonder when America is going to get smart and close all points of entry into this country for at least the next ten year, deport all that are here illegally and take care of their own.
To me this simply says we have a bunch of jackasses in Washington , DC that need to be gone, today, and they are not just in one party. They are those who have ties to big money in corporate America. The destruction to America is all for the almighty dollar, lack of common sense, political correctness and some for just dumb butt Socialist beliefs.
I agree January 2, 2008 8:28 AM!
Billions on a war that makes the rest of the world hate us. Yet, the 1.7 B LLNL budget, which is crums, compared to what we spend in Iraq and AFganistan, is being cut!
The ONLY way we can make a difference is vote the incumbents out, republicans and democrats! We have to stop feeling our vote does not make a difference. We must all vote. Not enough people vote today; that is why we have a bunch of jackasses in congress!
THIS IS A NEW TOPIC, BUT I COULDN'T FIND ANOTHER WAY TO POST IT.
I was laid off from Livermore Lab on May 22, 2008, after almost 20 years of service. The Lab denies age discrimination; however, time and time again they ignored their own lay-off policies. Instead of using an inverse order of seniority in which layoffs are determined by job classification based on the Lab's population as a whole, the Lab used a convoluted process in which the layoff decisions were made at the smallest possible level within each and every department (sometimes down to a unit of 2!). This made it easier to target who could be let go. Many older workers were "set up" by being moved into affected units prior to the lay-off, and their positions were then filled with much younger workers. There was also a large enough population of contract and supplemental workers that a lay-off of career Lab employees should have been unnecessary.
The vast majority of those laid off were older workers. We were too young to retire, but too old to easily find other employment (it took me two years to find a part-time job). Many have still not found work and are on the brink of bankruptcy. Although I now have a job that I love, to this day, I feel like I've been raped. The losses that I and the other laid-off workers have suffered are staggering. Our attorneys have prepared a youtube video, which gives just a small taste of what we have experienced. Please watch.
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