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 cost increase incrementally and increase our effectiveness beyond that over three years.
Our plans, projections and the proposal were based on that assumption. Last year it became clear that this incremental absorption strategy would not be sufficient.
With a FY08 congressional budget shortfall, increased costs of providing benefits and pensions, as well as normal inflation, our $80 million loss in spending power has escalated to $280 million and we need to reduce our annual support costs by more than $200 million.
These budget projections make it clear we must make dramatic changes at our Laboratory now. We must "step outside" of our normal day jobs, access our creativity and look for ways to re-engineer our Laboratory for continued operational and cost cutting efficiencies.
One of the efficiencies we must continue to look at is our staffing.
In late 2007/early 2008, approximately 450 supplemental labor and flex term employees departed our Laboratory. Last Friday we said goodbye to 215 career employees who participated in the Voluntary Self-Select Option Package. Many of these individuals had spent 20 or more years at our Laboratory and made significant contributions. Their departure marked the end of what we've been calling "Phase 2" of our workforce-restructuring plan.
These departures, coupled with normal attrition, bring us to approximately 7104 employees -- not including post docs, retirees and students. In October 2006 the beginning of fiscal year 2007 we had approximately 8057 employees.
We clearly are moving in the right direction but it is not sufficient.
We must now look at our Laboratory from a broad perspective and develop the business strategies for becoming much more efficient. We must develop a cost-effective approach to our operations.
To lead and facilitate this challenge, I have asked Frank Russo, Principal Associate Director for Business and Operations, and Ed Moses, Principal Associate Director for NIF and Photon Science, to lead a cross-directorate, institutional team. This team has been meeting for the past few weeks and has made exceptional progress. They are looking at areas where we can restructure the support activities of the Laboratory, examining functionality for its effectiveness and efficiency. This involves continuing to look at "personnel and overhead" costs.
The ideas being developed by these teams will supplement the suggestions that have come directly from employees and that also have been developed by other groups.We must continue to look at ways to reduce the workforce.
The VSSOP applications fell short of our goal of 750. Thus we are evaluating attrition, additional flex-term and supplemental releases -- as well as the possibility of an Involuntary Separation Plan (ISP) for our career-indefinite workforce. We are discussing this possibility now with NNSA.
If we do decide to implement an ISP, we will communicate the decision immediately and broadly with all of you and our community. This would include providing information on Lab policies related to separations with a full opportunity for you to ask questions.
There are no easy answers. I firmly believe that the actions we are taking are essential for a robust future.
We have a tremendous responsibility to the nation: Together, we literally hold the future of the Laboratory in our hands. I want to position the Laboratory to continue to provide the exceptional public service that is our history by applying world-class science and technology to the most challenging issues of our time: the defense, energy, environmental and economic security of our country.
I want the Laboratory to remain one of the premier laboratories in the nation and continue to deliver on our global security responsibilities. I want to attract new work and position the Laboratory to effectively meet the challenges of the future. I want to continue to recruit, retain and train a broad-based, diverse workforce. Doing all of this requires the dedication, creativity and focus of every segment of the Laboratory.
The Lab's current situation is a challenge for all of us. The months ahead will be difficult and change is everywhere. But with challenge and change come opportunity.
Everyday I see outstanding examples of the Laboratory's cutting-edge work in support of our country's most pressing issues in strategic defense, global security, energy and environment and basic science. I am inspired by the ideas and initiatives we are pursuing.
As always, and especially during this time of change and challenge I want you to be safe.
Please watch out for your own safety and that of your co-workers.
Thank you for your time to read this letter and in understanding our situation.
I am looking forward to your help in realizing our vision for the future of our Laboratory.
Regards,George Miller
20 comments:
Just so you people have a good weekend the original 535 needed to obtain the 750 required to meet budget needs has risen this week from 535 : 700 : 1000. I suspect this is what LLNS will ask for but it may not be what NNSA allows. I guess we'll find out in the coming months. Maybe they'll have "phase three" wrapped up by June 28th of 2008
How can someone be dedicated with so much doubt looming on the horizon?
There is no way, LLNS can keep the best and the brightest or attract same!
NNSA will waive that requirement!
Mark my word!
March 21, 2008 6:58 PM
Maybe there's no need for them anymore. We can have what we want done overseas with far less wages and just as good of results. The downside of all this outsourcing is, in a few generations not a single male or female in America will be able to repair or make anything unless it can be done on a computer. All end products will be produces in a foreign country by foreign labor. Eventually no one will be able to design anything simply because they'll have no hands on experience or the basic understanding of how to make a parts since they themselves have never used a hand tool or a machine tool. It's a sad state of affairs. Some of what I have described I already see in our current day work force and if this trend continues it will only get worse. The young have no desire to do manual labor and all want to be executives international businessmen and women, where the money is. Can't say I blame them but as far as helping the nations industrial independents, they are doing us more harm than good, but again todays world seems to be money driven not honor driven. You can see this in the way people going in debt well over their heads and then when confronted with indebtedness they simply walk away with no shames and blame the government or society for problem they themselves created. What a sad bunch of people we have become.
It's obvious that budgets are worse than LLNS expected and that their original numbers for layoffs are not going to be sufficient. (Russo has been quoted many times as telling employees in October that at most a few SLOs would need to be let go in FY08.)
Forget the best and the brightest. We haven't done well in hiring them lately anyway.
Always on a Friday - have a great holiday weekend.
GM has lied so many times to us. How many "phases" are there anyway?
The ULM band will play on, but the ship is going down fast. Head for the lifeboats NOW and row as fast as you can to get away from the undertow.
200m is nothing. The FED gave away 30Billion just to Bear Stearns.
The government could come up with that 200m shortfall easily IF they wanted to.
At least there is hope that they will go by the Lab's policy for a "flexible workforce." If they let those that built the Lab go, and keep the workers that were only supposed to supplement the career workforce.
As far as the best and the brightest - I think they will look at this mess and decide to go for the money or do research at an educational institution.
They lost the deal of the century when they turned their back on UC.
Notice how George smoothly lumped in the budget recuctions so that he skipped from admitting that the early estimate of $80M cost due to the transition was in itself off by about a factor of two. Was that dishonesty or incompetence? I believe both, and it bodes poorly for the future under this type of management.
NNSA would need to clean house of this management team if they hope to have the lab recover--or maybe they don't want a recovery so they can have one less national lab. Clearly the current management team is playing into that outcome either by ignorance or design. In any case, the management will get short term riches while the troops fall.
So UC is great, while Bechtel, BWT, and WGI are the devils that brought us all to the brink of destruction.
Reality check: Management under UC where mismanagement, cronyism, and lack of accountability were the order of the day, provided the ammunition used by DOE/NNSA to justify rebiding the Laboratory contracts. DOE/NNSA may have been willing to leave UC in charge of R&D, but expected improvements in all other areas. However, UC has never relinquished the reigns of the laboratories. Everyone is blaming the “new corporate partners” for all the ills that are occurring. Think for a moment –other than a few “token” partner personnel (~100 at LANL, and less that 40 at LLNL), all of the faces are the same UC faces as before the contract changes. Even when a ULM position is filled by partner personnel, their deputies and management staff are still the same UC faces as before. Partner personnel not in ULM have been placed in marginalized positions where they can be controled/minimalized, regardless of resume. Don’t take my word for it – look around. Decide for yourself. Perhaps if a truly new management team were leading the labs, things could be better. I for one was looking for better things with the contract change. I too am demoralized and concerned, but I continue to hold UC responsible.
Excerpts from two recent news articles you might find interesting:
”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.”
“Pattiz said that the governing boards, one for each lab, were composed of six members, three from the university and one each from the three principal industrial partners.
“In a tie-breaking situation,” he said, the university’s chairmanship, “gives us the ability to prevail.”
I'm curious. Knowing what you know now and what is going to happen in future years, how many of you would have taken TCP-1? Should the blog master start a poll?
If I'd known? I would have never wasted my career at LLNL.
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?
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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 the two facilities, the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, said Mr. Garamendi, a Democrat elected in 2006. He complained that the new contracts did not provide the university the right to escape a management obligation that the federal government could extend to 20 years.
The University of California system was the lead manager of the labs for decades until the U.S. Department of Energy announced in 2003 that it would put out for bid the labs’ management contracts. The university joined with corporate partners to form management teams that vied successfully for both contracts, in 2005 and 2007.
Mr. Garamendi may be the highest-ranking state official to knock the university’s role in the labs. Michael T. Brown, faculty representative on the regents’ board, also voiced opposition at Wednesday’s meeting, over plans to increase production of plutonium components at Los Alamos. Both labs have drawn opposition from faculty members over preliminary work to design a new generation of nuclear bombs to replace those in the nation’s aging arsenal.
The contracts were defended at the meeting by the system’s president, Robert C. Dynes, who is stepping down; by lab officials; and by Norman J. Pattiz, a prominent member of the board.
The discussion revealed some new details about the contracts, including that the university retains majority control of the management teams’ boards. When the contracts were awarded, Energy Department officials had hinted that the university would confine its role to science and scale back its role in security, following several embarrassing breaches.
In addition, even with the multiple partners, the new contracts have doubled the university’s annual management fee compared with what it had earned as the sole contractor. (The university has said it plows the fees back into scientific research.) —Paul Fain and Jeffrey Brainard
For 2:39pm---I believe that UC is neither the villain or the savior--just a non-player. It's Miller and Moses and the "NIF Alliance" with their highly over-active egos and lack of actual business knowledge. They have totally failed to maintain or increase business expertise--they actually desire to have weak business leaders so they don't have wiser people disagreeing with what they want, and unfortunately they are looking out for themselves and not the Lab, no matter what they try to portray.
Mark my words, they will be the downfall of the Lab.
10:17 PM
I second that motion! All in favor say "Aye"?
"At least there is hope that they will go by the Lab's policy for a "flexible workforce." If they let those that built the Lab go, and keep the workers that were only supposed to supplement the career workforce."
Not sure what you're trying to say. The next layoff will shoot about 500 career FTEs, while some 1400 flexible workers remain.
Hint: They need to keep the flexible workers around to layoff later when they admit the buget situation is even worse that what they're saying now. It's too much work to do another 3161.
"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?
March 28, 2008 2:44 PM
They are working on this diligently as you write. The PPPM section K is being rewritten and the final version will be published in July. I suspect that between now and then the FTE status will be diminished to a mere IAP contract status and the old UC protections of all kinds will have been abolished. At that time ULM LLNS can dispose of the 1000 employees needed to balance the budget for the remainder of FY--08 . If NNSA and DOE do not approve this then you'll know they've been blowing smoke up your butt all this time and everything they say from now on will not be believed. If they should renege on the ISP that would reconfirm they're lie's. However, I don't think they'll disappoints you in any way. I personally would be shocked to see NNSA say that's enough, we don't need any more lay-offs. So hold on please.
The goal March 28, 2008 2:44 PM is to eventually have all term and contract except for Phd's whereby they will be in a two tier system totally protected the Phd's as if they were a special creature about to become extinct. Anything below a PhD will be just a number on a computer print-out disposable at any time and on the drop of a dime. Your wish will be granted but it takes time to under 50 years of a great working environment and to find ways to circumvent Ca state laws. Given enough time and a steady influx of foreign national cheap labor, your wish of being demoted will in fact come true. So please be patient and get in line. Take care and God bless.
535:700:1000
B111 has no idea what it is doing.
"...best and the brightest or attract same!.."
This hasn't been true for a while. Look at the credentials of recent leaders. Second tier undergraduate educations and second tier graduate educations.
Hardly Feinman and Teller.
Is the STRATCOM or SECDEF of O'bamas successor going to trust the declining LLNL's or LANL's ability to certify the stockpile?
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