LLNL - The True Story -

Thanks for visiting. There is an average of 370 visits per day! Don't know how many visitors. Not as much as you would expect from a population the size of LLNL's. The only way I can tell is from the response to the polls. Low. Let us share this BLOG with co-workers. They may not visit the BLOG on their own but when they receive the link from one of their buddies, they will!

Filing: Countrywide CEO to get $10M last updated: March 29, 2008 04:32:07 PM LOS ANGELES Countrywide Financial Corp.'s chief executive and president will receive a combined $19 million in stock next week as part of the company's pending takeover by Bank of America Corp., according to a regulatory filing. The payments of stock valued at $10 million for chief executive Angelo Mozilo and $9 million for President David Sambol were disclosed in a regulatory filing late Thursday by Bank of America. The payments, described as "performance-based" stock rights and grants, are required by agreements the executives struck with Countrywide less than a year before the sub-prime meltdown forced the mortgage lender to sell itself, according to the filing. Some lawmakers were incensed by the payouts. "It's perverse for Bank of America to reward the principal architects of the bad business practices that caused this housing crisis," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y, said in a...

LLNL is hiring, hmmm preferably outside applicants!

This comment was misplaced under "RIF tally"; I feel, it should be a post by itself! If George cannot hear this, he will never anything else: Here we fo: Time is running out on LLNS and George. Until recently, employees have withheld judgement, to see how LLNS would restructure the lab. They have now seen enough to predict failure. The facts look bad. 1. LLNS management does not have command of information. This has made Miller's proclamations a source of ridicule. a. "No layoffs in first year" b."substantially equivalent" c."We can cover the costs of transition without staff reductions" d. "Leidle will lead a team to save $30M." e. " We need to recover $80M... ah $280M, ah...." 2. The $50M/year fee to access the best practices of industry is wasted. a. Bechtel, Battelle and BWXT have provided nothing of value. The senior industrial replacements brought nothing but themselves. They ask questions to try to solve problems, b...

Contributed by anonymous Dear George, It is time for a real incentive. LLNS has not been effective in understanding its situation or responding realistically. The expectation that 750 people would take the VSSOP incentive shows that you are getting terrible advice. You have a serious short-term operating financial shortfall, even as you are expected to implement new costly infrastructure changes. Time to be hard-nosed and to think realistically. You can fire 750-1000 people based on seniority. This will retain obsolete, highly-paid, tired personnel while releasing the lab's future. Or you can structure a realistic incentive that will select the high-paid, while retaining the younger, cheaper, more energetic. Consider. 750 folks is 10% of the labs population. About 15% of the the population is over 55 years old. Construct an incentive to move those people out. This means giving them the amount they will recieve at full-retirement (age 60), minus some amount for getting out early. Ma...

Several people made comments under other posts that merit their own topic. Here they are with a few comments. Anonymous said... I now understand why people who paid $500K+ for their homes which are well on their way down to a value of $250K or less are just plan walk away from their debt. These people know that it may take their entire life to break even, and since making money is the name of the game their situation is a zero sum game. They are had goose. March 28, 2008 7:21 AM Anonymous said... Just because one's home value goes down is no reason to walk away from it. There should be severe penalties for doing so. The selfish actions of a few are making it hard on the rest of us (e.g., 401k goes down, housing prices are depressed further, etc.), spiraling the economy towards a possible depression. March 28, 2008 10:05 AM Anonymous said... March 28, 2008 10:05 AM It's just as March 28, 2008 7:21 AM said. No body in their right mind is going to stay when they know they'll p...

I brought this to the top to give some of you people an idea of how others who you work along side every date feel. Here was their entry. "It's too much work to do another 3161." Question: How long is the 3161 plan good for? One round of layoffs? What if they change the rules and do away with the career status and therefore everyone is a flexterm?

Please post as a top level and entitle it,"A picture of where we may be" if you would. Rumor is: More people to go from NIF come Monday of next week. Just wait for that 10:00 AM phone call from your IAP employer. In April NIF dump 50 more people. Moses to give news about ISP Monday afternoon to NIF-troops. Where, who knows? Lets hope he gives us exact numbers and dates so we have time to find employment outside this one square mile. What do you think. Are they going for 535, 700 or 1000 + more people by July or Aug of 2008, since that when the PPPM-section K will have by then been revised. Of course you all must realize the longer ULM waits to dump these people, the $280M grows to $281M, $282M, $283M etc, etc; meaning in the end and more people must go. Combine this with a new conclusion that comes via many rumorw and what will we have. The next rumor is: We have been told we are $69M in debt on FY-09 budget and LLNL is again going to take another 10% cut in funding below tha...

Anonymous contribution: The LLNL missions of the future in nuclear design and engineering excellence, high-speed computing, and high explosives research should be enough to keep 100-200 people working. The only key player will be NIF. Maybe the rest of the Lab should be shut down, and a fence erected between NIF and the south 40, which will need environmental cleanup before new houses can be built. On second thought, if the rest of the Lab closes, NIF will have no one to subsidize its operation.

Is this an indication of what's to come of LLNL as it did LANL? LLNL The Up and Coming Story

Contributed by anonymous: NASA cuts...

Contributed by anonymous: If our 401K money would be posted on time, when the market was down, we might have made 2% today, but oh no they are going to again blame it on a computer qlitch that i was told was fixed last time? I talked to a Fidelity Rep a couple of weeks ago and she indicated that by law LLNS actually has 45 days to post our money. I don't know if thats true but something needs to be done!

Layoffs likely at Livermore Lab Facility's finances continue to weaken, director says By Betsy Mason, STAFF WRITER Article Created: 03/23/2008 02:37:54 AM PDT More layoffs may be in store for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after a voluntary buyout program fell short of reducing the work force by 10 percent. Lab director George Miller told employees in an e-mail Friday that 215 permanent employees left with severance packages on March 14, far fewer than the goal of 750. "We clearly are moving in the right direction," Miller wrote. "But it is not sufficient." Since October 2006 the lab has dropped from 8,057 employees to 7,104. That reduction includes 450 supplemental laborers and employees with fixed-term contracts who were laid off in January, the 215 who took buyouts, as well as normal attrition. Miller said the lab's financial situation continues to worsen in the wake of the management changeover in October from the University of California to a ne...

Contributed by anonymous: What a good neighbor!

Any one care to rank LLNS like they did LANS. Here's LANS Evaluation . Can't wait to see how LLNS comes out.

Contributed by anonymous: This is what happens when certain physicists with no business knowledge are in charge. They don't have a vision of how to have a productive balanced business operation. Worst, they surround themselves with their marginally skilled and poorly prepared "cronies" and "yes" people. At least past directors chose to have a variety of competent people around them that spoke their minds, since their personal wealth wasn't dependent on being puppets. People moderately competent would have known early on what the true additional costs of the new contract would be (only fools or sycophants believed it was only $80Million. Do we really have a business operation that didn't understand taxes and benefit cost changes with an LLC????), or did they just refuse to tell it like it was, since it wasn't what management wanted to hear at the time. This management "team" will do a good job of looking out for themselves (adding to their p...

Contributed by anonymous: So, I will ask the question one more time. If UC still has a lead roll in LLNL than why did they kick all of us off the UCRP program. Could it be that was a legal way to save their disgusting greedy butts from having to pay us what we were orignally promised? From what I see, this is an absolute. Any lawyer out there will to take on the UC and get 8000 people back their retirement that was ripped off from them? ++++++++++++++++++++++++ March 21, 2008 U. of California's Lab-Management Contracts Draw Fire at Meeting of Regents San Francisco — California’s lieutenant governor scolded the University of California this week for signing new contracts that continue the university’s lead role in managing the nation’s two premier nuclear-weapons laboratories. During a contentious meeting on Wednesday of the Board of Regents, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi called the contracts a bad deal. The university could be “splattered by the mud” if new security lapses occurred at th...

Moderator - I wanted this to be a new topic and not a comment. At the following website: https://pppm-int.llnl.gov/k_separations.htm The document contains: Layoff (to be rewritten by April 2008)III.1 Layoff for 200-Series Employees III.1.4 Notice of Layoff to Employees In the event of a layoff, Human Resources shall prepare written notification to be given to the employee. The minimum notice period will be based on the employee's seniority as follows: An employee with fewer than ten years of seniority shall receive thirty (30) calendar days' notice. An employee with at least ten but fewer than fifteen years of seniority shall receive sixty (60) calendar days' notice. An employee with at least fifteen but fewer than twenty years of seniority shall receive ninety (90) calendar days' notice. An employee with twenty years or more of seniority shall receive one hundred and twenty (120) calendar days' notice. The employee will receive pay in lieu of notice for each additi...

A letter to employees from Director George Miller Colleagues, Several weeks ago, I promised to provide you an update on the Laboratory's challenges, status and the path forward. These are difficult times and I know many of you are vitally interested in our ongoing plans for workforce restructuring and cost reductions. I'll try to address these issues in this note. The challenges that we face are generally rooted in the increased costs that have crept in over time and those that are associated with the contract transition, higher than expected inflationary pressures and continuing erosion of our funding because of the general issues associated with the federal budget. The increased costs make us less competitive and less attractive to sponsors as we look to apply the Laboratory's talents to the important issues facing our country. When we developed the contract proposal more than two years ago, we did so with the expectation that we could absorb a then estimated $80 million ...

From anonymous Scooby: Can you post the following from LANL’s blog on 3/19 (http://lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com/) as a top level post? There is a lot of relevance for us here at LLNL. Now I see that one of the performance measures is how fast they can kick us out of lab space and building. Each consolidation means less equipment and experimental apparatus. (capabilities) This translates as fewer proposals and therefore, less money coming into the Lab, but it is not about us is it? It is all about what the Bechtelians can squeeze out of the Lab and the taxpayer. Wednesday, March 19, 2008 New LANL Contractor Earns $58 Million Fee By Raam Wong, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer Federal officials have determined that the contractor that now runs Los Alamos National Laboratory should be awarded a $58 million fee for its first year on the job. The total includes a fixed $22 million management fee as well as a $36 million performance fee for meeting most— but not all— of i...

UC regents open discussion on laboratories By ROGER SNODGRASS, Monitor Editor Meeting in San Francisco Wednesday, the University of California Board of Regents heard disagreements about the university’s role in the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Criticism came this time not only from students, who are often vocal during regents’ meetings, but also from California Lt.-Gov. John Garamendi, a Democrat and an ex officio member of the board, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by what he heard. An audio webcast of an open session of the Committee on Oversight of the Department of Energy laboratories began with a complaint by the board’s faculty representative, Michael Brown. Also the chair of the Academic Senate and an advisory member of the laboratory oversight committee, Brown said the faculty was concerned about the federal government’s plan currently under discussion to increase pit manufacturing from 50 to 80 nuclear triggers a year at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and that the uni...

Here are POGO's findings. pogo.org and huge press coverage! NBC11 KTVU CBS5 ABC7 Mercury News etc....

Lab hearings set for today Watchdog group wants plutonium out of Livermore facility by next year By Betsy Mason, STAFF WRITER Article Created: 03/18/2008 02:34:18 AM PDT With public hearings on the future of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory set for today and Wednesday in Tracy and Livermore, a government watchdog group has released a report calling for plutonium to be removed from the lab by next year. The Department of Energy already is planning to move all but a small amount of plutonium and other weapons-grade nuclear materials from Livermore to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico by 2012 as part of its plan to shrink and revamp the entire nuclear weapons complex. "We want to reduce the amount of special nuclear materials in the Livermore valley drastically," the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration Director Thomas D'Agostino said. "You don't have a community growing up around Los Alamos." But the Project on Government Oversig...

Lawrence Livermore National Security's Benefits and Investment Committee (BIC) has selected a trustee and investment manager to help administer the LLNS Defined Benefit Pension Plan. Since it was formed this summer, the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) has established operating and investment policies for the plan and selected BNY Mellon as the trustee and Watson Wyatt as the investment adviser. The BIC is made up of various members of the Laboratory and LLNS partner companies.The BNY Mellon is a leading asset management and securities services company that has more than $20 trillion in assets under custody or administration and more than $1 trillion under management. Watson Wyatt is a global consulting firm focused on human capital and financial management and serves the world’s largest pension plans. The BIC has been developing the plan document and performing actuarial analysis in coordination with the University of California and NNSA/ DOE to determine the amount of assets ...

Taken from an earlier post: "Word on the street is ULM had a off site meeting this weekend to discuss the cutting of another 500 employees and the restructuring of the laboratory. I believe they called it a 100 day plan. You'll probably see entire groups or division collapse into one another along with building consolidation. Also the janitors had a meeting with Russo this week and he told them there would be more cut backs. So all you EBA's get ready to learn how to clean toilets." I believe the statement was something to the effect of, "we are continually looking for ways to save money and as the buildings go away so will the jobs and with that the people and this doesn't mean only custodians. Anyone who has more input please post the facts here. If this meeting actually took place the 100 days to termination of 500- 535 more employees coincides with one of ULM's LLNS new-hires that promised or should I say guaranteed they'd have LLNL's man-powe...

Morphing The National Labs LLNL- You're Next Did you get your invitation? Do you think they'll tell the city there's a plan to let 535 more people go shortly, right after DOE's approval; of which I'm sure they'll get without an arguement? If you haven't been told you may have read your local newspaper and noticed you've been invited to a townhall meeting in Tracy . After the meeting please visit the Complex Transformation website. Please feel free to give any and all comments that you may have by sending them to complextransition@nnsa.doe.gov Comments can be submitted in writing to: . Mr. Theodore Wyka at: Complex Transformation SPEIS Document Manager, Office of Transformation, NA-l0.l, U.S. Department of Energy/NNSA . " 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. 20585; or by facsimile to 1-703-931-9222, or bye-mail to: complextransformation@nnsa.doe.gov Please mark envelopes and e-mails as "ComplexTransformation SPEIS Comments" More ...

Bechtel, Blackwater, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman......... Read on At this rate how long can you hold on or the economy goes into a full blown depression. Oh I forgot. The news media says we're not in a recession.

Check this out! Nothing new just confirmation: Click here

Anonymous is asking: Has anyone heard from his/her Congressman? I sent both a letter and email to Tauscher and haven't even had a form letter or automatic email response.

Hi, I am an Ombuds person at LLNL. I had someone come in and enlighten me about the fact that LLNS is not paying out 401K money on time and it's arriving late ~ 1 week they're using our pay as well as their end for that time with out compensation. You lose interest or if the market is in and upward trend the money you would have made, I thought this would be illegal. But there it is. I think they have trouble calculating payroll anyway as I changed my deductions from 2 to 10 and it only made a $40 dollar difference in take home pay. My CPA was amazed. Is it possible that they're using our money to pay/make up their financial problems???

Employees who applied for the Labs Voluntary Self-Selection Option Program (VSSOP) were formally notified of their acceptance yesterday. According to Art Wong of Human Resources, 215 employees exercised this option. These employees have been notified and our office is working with them on the exit process. We wish them well in their new endeavors, he said. HR will set up an exit center at the Labs Training Center on Friday, March 14. Departing employees and their supervisors are reminded to safely transition appropriate Laboratory documents and property such as keys, classified documents and other important material and government-owned property. I want to thank our departing employees for their dedication to our Laboratory, said Director George Miller. I hope all employees will join me in acknowledging their contributions to the Laboratory and the nation. The final breakdown of VSSOP acceptances can be viewed on the Retooling the Workforce Web page. Employees will see two charts the f...

Check this out! who do you trust? click here

I'd say this sums up LLNL as it is today fairly well. Let me introduce to you a dead on assessment of the times behind the one square mile fence-line. LLNL The Factual Story By the way. These's also a survey floating around the LLNL e-mail system asking for your opinion about what it's like to work at various nuclear weapons related complexes. May I suggest you take the survey and be honest about your feelings of how things are being run, your management and just what do you want LLNL's mission to be. They've asked for your opionion. Now's the time to let it rip and unload all that you've been holding back. Contact them at Nuclear Deterrent Survey Since NNSA has refused to post your comments about the 3161, you've once again been given a chance to express you likes and dismays. Don't miss this opportunity.

For those who bad-mouth SPSE/UTPE, take time the time to read this! Lab says it will recognize union # LIVERMORE: Agreement avoids a possible protracted dispute with unit of 170 skilled workers By Betsy Mason STAFF WRITER Article Launched: 02/29/2008 03:12:48 AM PST Lawrence Livermore Laboratory reached an agreement with labor organizers Thursday recognizing a bargaining unit that includes 170 skilled crafts workers such as plumbers and mechanics. In return, the Society of Professionals, Scientists and Engineers, which led the unionization campaign, agreed to drop two unfair labor practice charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board and one internal grievance. "We're jubilant," said lab computer scientist Jim Wolford, a leader of the organizing drive. "We were looking at a rather protracted struggle." Just before an Oct. 1 change in lab management from the University of California to Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC, the California Public Empl...

Here is some news at last from the Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers for the Lab! Thank you SPSE! Important dates to remember; they hold their board meetings on these dates all from 5-6PM in Bld 123, conf room A: Wednesday, March 5 Wednesday, March 19 Wednesday, April 2 Wednesday, April 16 And now for a "dead on" assessment of the LLNS transition, the turmoil it created and issues that must be over come, if we can. Dead On Assessment

Looks like LLNL's SPSE union needs a little practice on how to take down the big dogs. So far it's LLNS/ LLNL (1) , Union (0) . Union Drops Charges Against Lawrence Livermore Laboratory BY KATE STURLA Contributing Writer Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Category: News > University > Higher Education Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recognized a skilled trades employees unit on Thursday, leading its parent union to drop two unfair labor practice charges. After the lab, which is partly managed by the university, recognized the unit, the Society of Professionals, Scientists, and Engineers dropped charges that cited a failure to recognize and bargain with the existing bargaining organization. The unit includes 170 employees in several positions, including plumbers, mechanics and pipe fitters. "We are pleased that we've reached an agreement with SPSE and we look forward to future good-faith negotiations," stated lab spokesperson Susan Houghton in an e-mail. The Calif...

Contributed by anonymous: The Livermore Independent has an interesting article Go to article These layoffs/return of workers will occur early March and the funding is nowhere to be seen. You'll see some additional strain on the lab as they try to find work for people who have left the environmental restoration program. The concern is there could be layoffs and the team that has been put together will be broken-up. “The technical staff at the Lab is quite a competent team. I’d hate to see it broken up because of a funding glitch,” she added. To date, no workers have been laid off. If the funding were not available, the Lab would return them to their home programs, according to Bellardo. He said it would be up to the Lab to determine the disposition of the workers, whether they would be laid off or not.

Isn't it GREAT to no longer be employed by UC????? As a UC retiree we have also been told that even though UC is now offering Vision Service Plans to their retirees as of 4/1/08, the LLNL and LLNS UC retirees will not get this because LLNS has said "no". Also, LLNL and LANL UC retirees will have to get the okay from DOE in order to get an ad hoc COLA. In another word, we will never get an AD HOC COLA. What an AD HOC COLA is - it's another much higher COLA provided about every 10 yrs or so that UC gives to its retirees to catch them up with actual inflation if the annual 2% has not done that. With inflation on the increase, this is going to happen here sometime soon and DOE will say "nope" to the LLNL and LANL UC retirees getting this. Its all total crap and a rotten deal that we got because of this contract change. Its one of the worst decisions I've ever seen made by our government.

Out of 202 respondents, only 39 said yes would/have take/taken it. That is 20%. An indication (but not a guarantee) that we will be way below 200.

There's really no winning when it come to the degradation of LLNL. The nation in general in a spiraling economic decline with no end in sight and we're just part of the big story to come. Maybe we're to become just another third world nation.