Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
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Another point I wish to raise is this VSIP issue of limiting an incentive to the layoff package. Is it not true if you volunteer you do not get unemployment. At that rate wouldn’t you get more if you just waited to be riffed??? There is no incentive to take the incentive.
I strongly believe in the statement “Hello, is there anybody in there.”
For LANL workers who signed up for the voluntary, the State of New Mexico has announced they will get unemployment benefits. But there's a catch - if you're receiving a pension, that amount is considered when calculating your benefits.
Another rumor I've heard, but don't know for sure, is that your unemployment benefits don't start until after your severance period is over. So if you're eligible for 39 weeks severance pay (the maximum you can get at LANL), your unemployment benefits are delayed 39 weeks.
IF you VSIP, you are volunteering to be laid off. You are not quitting. That means you are still eligible for unemployment, or at least that's the take from the LANL blog. Now whether or not New Mexico and California view that differently, that could be debating point.
What I have asked out of curiosity is if you VSIP and retire, do you get medical in retirement? I can see LLNS trying to keep from paying that out. Anybody from HR want to pipe in?
IF you VSIP, you are volunteering to be laid off. You are not quitting. That means you are still eligible for unemployment, or at least that's the take from the LANL blog. Now whether or not New Mexico and California view that differently, that could be debating point.
What I have asked out of curiosity is if you VSIP and retire, do you get medical in retirement? I can see LLNS trying to keep from paying that out. Anybody from HR want to pipe in?
I have yet to see where this transition has saved any money what so ever. It seems to be totally responsible for creating more layers of bureaucracy that in the end will accomplish nothing. Their goal for the next 18 months is to thin LLNL down to a reasonable size of about 4 - 6 thousands people to make it appear as if the cost of doing business has gone down. In the meantime after they have destroy all that was good ULM will again be rewarded for a job well done. A magical trick, but the newspaper story to follow will make it appear as if spending $79M and laying off 3 - 4 thousand people was money well spent. In the end UC will be happy because we're off their pension plan, LLNL ULM will be happy because they've accomplished their assigned mission, and work at LLNL will have come to a near halt. At that time all will be well in paradise. The country will now be at piece and most of ULM will retire with pensions in the hundreds of thousand of dollars a years. For some it's going to be had because how can one be expected to retire on $34,166.66 a month. That what 100% retirement at $410K a year brings into your checking account. Poor bastards. The rest of the ULM consortium will not be far behind where they do will enjoy the life of the rich and famous. Life at the top is wonderful.
I think it's time to run like hell
Why does LANL get 39 weeks and we get only 26?
LANL's severance package is 1 week's pay for each of the first 6 years of service, then 2 week's pay for each year beyond 6, capped at 39 week's pay. So an employee with 22-1/2 years of service maxes out on severance pay. It has been that way for a long time. It was probably higher than LLNL's severance package as an added incentive to get employees to sign on to live and work in a relatively isolated and remote setting, and not much of a job market to fall back on in case of significant layoffs.
That's just my guess.
P.S. LANL employees get 12 hours sick leave accumulation per month, which is also 1-1/2 times what we at LLNL get. Relatively large amounts of unused sick leave balance added a lot of service credit to those long-term LANL employees who went with TCP-2.