What benefits and wages should all new hires at LLNL / LLNS ask for.My #1 request would be a LLNS gas card whereby the company would have to pay for my fuel cost of coming to and from work. A log book may be required but who cares. In my case just having a gas card would equate to about a $1000 a month pay raise before taxes. It's time to make LLNS start paying for the best and brightest. See side bar for what fuel cost today then sit down and figure out what it's costing you per month to come to work at LLNL. Was that maybe 2% pay raise the breaking even mark for you when it came to the cost of getting to work? Maybe if the pay raise would've been 20% we'd have broke even, but as it stands now everyone one of us except for ULM going backwards at warp speed.
Gas Cards For All Employees
No it's not just good enough to have a "JOB". LLNL is now a "for profit" organization and it's time for them to start acting like one, just as all of their competitor's do for their employees.
25 comments:
Do away with the 401K and bring back a pension plan equal to and nothing less than UCRP's. If you don't you'll work until you are 65and be in poverty afterwards. Don't come to work for LLNS until you have investigated the highest wage paid to any 4 digit classification in 2007. Even if you accept that wage under stand you'll still be 20% behind what it takes to live in California. After you get that 20% increase over these 2007 wages, get the gas card you're going to need it. If you don't it's a pay cut. Don't let the fools in ULM pull the wool over your eye. Pass the word national of their scheme to coax you into coming here for a higher wage when they know those wages are below average for the area. Remember that $40K a year in California is POVERTY.
Yes" Remember that $40K a year in California is POVERTY."
You also better tell them that $98K is only enough to get by one if you bought your home in the 80's. You will not own one on those wages here unless you live in the hood on a single income. Even if you get the $100K a year you'll still need that gas card simply because now days getting to work will cost you about $500 a month unless you drive a motorcycle and that just means a shorter life span. Don't be fooled new employees.
April 27, 2008 12:14 PM
If you want the gate hours modified, I suggest you write the Director. Don't blame security.
Quite a lot of these comments are selfish and assume everyone wants the same benefits from working at LLNL. I chose to live in one of the apartment complexes close enough to the lab that I can bike to work if needed. Why would I need a gas card just because other people made bad decisions where to live and refuse to move closer to work?
If anything I find the lack of more condos and apartments close to the lab confusing. The city built quite a few $1M lots next to the lab but no new affordable housing. If the country really wants to start fixing problems with gas prices, they should look into why people are driving ridiculous distances to work in the first place.
As for someone suggesting "doing away with the 401k" maybe some people don't want a pension? I for one do not want to feed hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay current liabilities in a pension system for a workplace that will be diminished to 3,000 employees or less by 2015. Not to mention the risk of it disappearing entirely considering my retirement date is somewhere beyond 2030.
"I chose to live in one of the apartment complexes close enough to the lab that I can bike to work"
Good for you! If you can live in an apartment, more power to you. You sound like you are single. With kids, you need a house and a yard, my friend. What is good for the goose...
Yeah that right we should all live nuts to butts with neighbors on all sides so we can have togetherness. Bull hocking on that carp. I prefer 5-20 acre with no trespassing sign and another one that says trespassers will be shot on site and survivors will be shot again. To heck with that living in a commune so I can be close to work.
City slicking living is not for me. I prefer bears, mountain lions and coyotes as my neighbors and friends. They're a lot friendly than people and less nasty. People are just trouble with laws to protect them from justice while the wild animal take care of misfits by the rules of the wild.
I'll take my gas card and live away from people as far as my paycheck will allow me.
condos work for young families. You don't need a yard necessarily.
With kids you NEED a house and a yard?
April 27, 2008 4:47 PM
He already knows but EM, GM and FR are just to preoccupied with taking care of ULM instead of doing anything good for the lab.I can only assume his intention is to make it as miserable as he can for everyone so they'll just quit on their own and that way he can sleep good at night. These people don't have to drag their butts out of bed until about 8:00AM to work at 9:00 AM if we could get them here ON TIME. They are the elitists. I forgot.
April 27, 2008 5:05 PM
Maybe we'll get lucky and this poster that wants to live in an apartment close to LLNL and ride his bike'y to work won't have any kids.
Advise to new hires - don't buy a house/condo to the east/north of LLNL (Tracy, Stockton, Discovery Bay, etc.). You will see great deals, but you'll have to wait a long time to see the prices go back up. You're better off in Pleasanton or Walnut Creek (nice bars and restaurants)... also when the lab goes in the tank for good, you'll be closer to the jobs in SF and SJ.
So what benefits do you want beside a gas card, as pension and hopefully full medial for life.
This is not a socialist state. Nobody owes you anything. If you think you are underpaid and have to live too far from work, you have the freedom to find another job and live elsewhere.
new hires should get the same comp package that HW,FR,SL,RR,HC and the rest of the RECHTEL boys get, profit sharing based on gross profits rechtel makes on all projects and bonuses based on how many people you can fire at LLNL
April 27, 2008 7:21 PM
There are braindead people everywhere. Oh and I was talking about you.
April 27, 2008 8:15 PM
Yes that is what we want. Equal treatment. Will we ever get it? NOOOOOOO. I say it's time to close her down much, much faster that 2012. If the President was smart he madate LLNL be close next year or the beginning of FY-09
(nice bars and restaurants)...
There's some priorities in life. Bars and restaurants. You can take all the bars and close those alcoholic safe havens down now. I've never seen much worth saving that hangs out around bar. Lets see, loose women, drunks, alcoholic, men that think their bad.
I've always found bars to be a good place for the police to hang out to help populate our jails and keep the revenue coming in. I guess drunks and bars do serve a purpose.
Sorry that's not a benefit in the LLNS contract.
April 27, 2008 5:05 PM
I'll tell you what youngan I live in a home with a yard in a nice town and even this isn't by choice. I hate and always have hated being only 20 feet away from people where you can't do anything without being watch or noticed. I am not in this environment by choice yet I am in a home that I can afford on my wages. That is what dictate for me where I can live and what I have to make to maintain it. For this reason I have some very long days that now days are very costly. For that reason I am all for a gas card and would have no trouble taking one if ULM were to give but I will assure you they have car allowances because they only make $427K a year. Poor people. I can't possibly see how anyone can live on $37K a month. Ask me if I feel sorry for the thug or anyone like him. NOT! I'd like to tell you what I really feel but the blogmaster won't let me but I think you get the idea. I hope someday to be able to get away from all this crap and live a pieceful life away from all that has every bothered me.
April 27, 2008 8:28 PM
I was incomplete and misleading. Although you have the freedom to work somewhere else, you personally may not be good enough to find another job.
Maybe the tooth fairy will bring us gas cards.
The young will get screwed because they have no idea of how they're going to be taken advantage of until the reach about 50 with hopes of retirement and then they'll find out they can't, not for at least 15 more years. How sad for the generations to come. Unless they are wiling to revote and make demands from their employers equal to UCRP or better.
It's now projected that a barrel of crude could go to $200. Maybe the old gas card will become a reality when gas at the pumps is $8.00 a gallon in America. Keep giving up those benefits and you'll end up on the losing end ofthe stick.
Yes sir, $8.00 a gallon on its way. Give them time. For your reading enjoyment. Still don't want a gas card?
From Times Online
April 28, 2008
Opec chief warns of $200 a barrel oil price
David Robertson
The president of Opec, the cartel of oil-producing countries, has given warning that the price of crude could hit $200 a barrel, sparking fears that rising fuel costs will force more businesses into bankruptcy.
Chakib Khelil, the Algerian Energy Minister and president of Opec, said that the falling value of the US dollar would continue to drive up oil prices as investors sought to store their wealth in other assets.
Lehman Brothers, the bank, has said that high prices are being sustained by an influx of money into the oil market from investment funds.
It estimates that "hot money" accounts for between $20 to $30 of the recent increase in oil prices and about $40 billion (20 billion) has been invested in the sector so far this year equal to all the money pumped into oil last year.
The price of oil hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel today after North Sea production was shut down yesterday because of a strike at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland.
In early trading the price of US light crude rose $1 to $119.93 amid concern about the impact of industrial action at Grangemouth.
This came on top of a $2.50 gain on Friday and leaves the price of oil up more than 25 per cent since the start of the year.
The price of Brent oil rose 83 cents to $117.17 and oil analysts have predicted that further price rises are likely in the coming months.
Supply shortages are expected to get worse over summer, which is hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico.
In addition, demand usually rises in hot months when air-conditioning units are operating at full blast. If financial investors continue to pour money into oil funds, as the president of Opec has suggested, this could cause prices to spike even higher.
Today's price rises came as workers at Grangemouth, which is operated by Ineos, a chemical company, began a two-day walkout yesterday over pension benefits.
This forced the closure of the 700,000 barrel-a-day Forties pipeline and sparked fears that Scotland and the North of England could face petrol shortages.
Grangemouth supplies 10 per cent of the UK's petrol but also produces power for BP's Kinneil plant, which processes the oil from the Forties pipeline.
The oil price was also supported by concern over a surge in violence in oil-rich southern Nigeria, which led to five policemen being shot dead on Sunday.
Attacks by militia forces forced Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobile to shut down oil production temporarily two days ago.
Traders were also spooked by continued tensions between the United States and Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer.
A cargo ship hired by the US Navy fired on Iranian forces on Friday.
The rise in oil prices comes despite a 400,000 barrel-a-day reduction in physical demand from the United States, which is consuming less because of its economic slowdown. This has been more than offset by rising financial demand as funds seek alternative investments to the falling US dollar.
Analysts fear that the price will rise even higher as supply shortages get worse in the coming months while both physical and financial demand increase.
On the supply side, shortages may occur if there is a bad hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico and because the oil industry typically saves maintenance work at fields such as the North Sea for good weather.
Summer usually brings a rise in demand as air-conditioning use rises, particularly in the Middle East.
Rapid economic growth in the region has led to a large increase in energy consumption, which is diverting oil and gas away from export markets to feed domestic needs.
This has exacerbated the effect of rising energy demand in the region.
The high price of oil is already having an impact on the global economy, with airlines going bust and drivers paying more to fill their cars.
Eos, the business-class-only airline, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday and joins at least six other carriers that have also been grounded in the past two weeks by high costs.
Gas cards soon to be needed.
Hugo Chavez: "Oil prices will soar to $200 a barrel
if the US attacks Venezuela"
The President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez Frias said recently that world oil prices would surge to $200 dollars a barrel if the United States attacks his country. President Chavez added, "We are preparing for the resistance!"
In a CNN interview Chavez said "if they attack us with their battleships, with waves of intelligence officers, bombs, marines and all of that, well, you can forget about oil."
Chavez, has charged the United States with drafting a plan to attack Venezuela but he says that any such invasion would leave Venezuela and the Americans without oil.
"The barrel could reach $200 from one day to the other ... the US government can forget about the 1.5 million barrels of oil that we send every day and which contributes enough to its development."
"We are preparing for the resistance ... terrorists who live in the United States are planning my death," he added.
Despite the antagonism between Caracas and Washington, Chavez on Sunday said his country will continue to send one and a half million barrels of gasoline to the United States to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, mostly Afro-Americans. "Citgo" gasoline stations in the USA owned by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. are selling gasoline and heating fuel at one half the prices being charged by Chevron and similar companies that are gouging the American people.
I have a cure for this piece of work but I'm not on the squad, but I sure wish I was.
Gas cards are definitely needed but could be avoided if.
April 29, 2008 6:52 PM
The good old USA needs some training on how to deal with an adversary. Hugo can only raise prices if he's alive to do so. The smart move is to not do as we did in Iraq. The objective is to take "him" out at the perfect time and location leaving no traces as to who may have been the terminator. That's exactly how Iraq and all of its militant associates should have been handled too. Not a war, unless you're willing to take out the entire population. It needs to be on a one by one basis until each and every adversary is eliminated. Discretion and patients is the name of the game when it comes to dealing with punks. You wait until they feel comfortable in their environment and believe they've been successfully then when they least expect it, wallah, they're history. Do you think the good old USA has learned anything or will they eventually self implode.
Post a Comment