Anonymously contrinuted:
I was RIFed 5/22/08. 28 years with LLNL. I have been EBA within computations for a long time. I found out they put the EBA's in a special OPS layoff unit so our seniority didn't mean a thing (only a few people in each classification). Needless to say we only found that out the day we left. That's OK, at least I made it off the sinking ship. Good luck to all my friends and watch your backs.
10 comments:
"The Lab is close to achieving its goal of making the cost of an FTE equal to what it was in FY07".
This is really smoke and mirrors. As they move around the numbers to make FTE's look cheaper the cost of doing business keeps going up.
We had 5 increases this year alone on the fees associated with sitting in an office space. We now pay fees for many services that used to be covered by infrastructure. You now have to go outside the directorate to print posters and other such material. You are responsible for cleaning your own offices and have to use direct WFO accounts to pay for cleaning the laboratories. Need a badge request for a foreign national, its going to cost you.
I'll have to hand to the RECHTEL boys skating aroud the senority issue, after talking to some of my co-workers with connections we figered out how they did it; the buisness unit was based on the group you worked in ;for example lets say a person worked in shipping and receiving and their job class was xxx.x; the buisness unit is shipping and recieving; then the person job class xxx.x would come into play so if person class is 123.2, 123.1 or 123.3 mangement would then decide wich job class to eleminate in that unit thus ULM could skate around the senority issue; The other option they had was to eliminate the entire buisness unit all to gether.
While I am sympathetic to this persons plight, how does being EBA for quite awhile make this smell like wrong-doing? I've heard that we've had people EBA for years - how do we justify that expense?
May 25, 2008 11:21 AM
A lot of money is spent on the infrastructure needed to support foreign nationals. If I don't need it for my program, why should I pay for par of it through an indirect tax such as G&A. If you need it, you pay for it.
I don't think it smells like wrongdoing at all. You stated yourself you were EBA for a long time. In any other company on the planet, you would have been let go long ago. the EBAs are a big reason the lab got into this budget mess in the first place. Why pay a bunch of employees for not working?
People who remain EBA for prolonged periods of time generally have one or both of the following problems.
1. Poor work habits
2. Inappropriate skills
In the outside world either of the two will get you let go and both are the kiss of death. I wish no ill to anyone but I sincerely hope there is a change in the way EBA's are handled in the future.
The EBA function is needed in a matrix organization. It should not however be a career choice.
Computations is cutthroat. Look at the leaders. A very short-lived expertise. I advise my kid's friends that it is a crap shoot as a career, like professional athletics. Lots of start-ups, lots of failures. The smart ones go for technologies that are more long-lived. The dumb ones go to work for the DOE.
This is what should be taught in Comp curricula.
Computations is cutthroat. Look at the leaders. A very short-lived expertise. I advise my kid's friends that it is a crap shoot as a career, like professional athletics. Lots of start-ups, lots of failures. The smart ones go for technologies that are more long-lived. The dumb ones go to work for the DOE.
This is what should be taught in Comp curricula.
May 26, 2008 4:59 PM
You are absolutely correct. A short term stop gap between projects is what an EBA program is meant for.
The difficulty is in deciding how long is too long. Especially in the WFO arena, sponsors are notorious for delaying promised money. I know of at least one EBA who had been in that status for a few months, but had pretty certain money coming in. This person was let go, where as other EBAs in this status for much longer with no future prospects were retained.
EBAs were not placed in a special layoff unit; they were placed in the business/layoff unit of their most recent paid position.
Some EBAs that were let go were "professional EBAs" and perpetual, and it was the right thing to see them go.
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