Well, the topic is simple enough, but is the reality? How is your morale and what motivates you?
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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The employees gave up a long time ago and now the management has given up too. There is no motivation and terrible moral.
LLNL is like a case study in failed management at every level. It should be studied and books should be written on it to help CEOs not repeat these mistakes in the future.
I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?
http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/2000/200/23263/23263.strip.sunday.gif
NNSA has managed to kill off the weapons labs. Unfortunately, top levels over at NNSA believe they've done a fantastic job. How sick is that?
10-beam
serving time in the sinecure with a wry smile
- pay the bills until I can retire.
My morale -
- Stagnant Pay
- More rules and regulations that won't enhance my safety or security.
- Looking forward to peeing in a cup.
- Gleefully waiting for a call for a polygraph.
- Love how management is making it faster and cheaper to layoff people.
For example, the answer to one of the questions in the salaries Q&A section in Newline.
The question was: (not verbatim) since LLNL wants to attract and retain above average talent, why are we basing compensation on averages?
The answer?
The contract requires LLNS to do that.
My remark: LLNS cannot reward excellence and expect the difference between excellence and mediocrity to be 1/2 a percent raise.
I have been asked (as an Ombuds) to give feedback to a WorkLife committee that apparently covers many issues at the lab and is next going to be discussing retention.
I am specifically looking for information on the following:
1. What is important to employees in their workplace?
2. What issues have been raised why people are leaving the Lab?
and in general 3; the Lab's morale and what is important to employees.
Please don't send anything confidential but of course everything I submit will be anonymous. You can send things to me by entrust if you would like.
Unfortunately they just asked for this and want it by the end of the day today Thurs. 10/9.
Thank-you to everyone who took the time to send me feedback on retention, morale etc. I received about 2 dozen responses which I believe means people have a lot to say!
I pulled the responses out and pasted them into one work doc as well as this summary;
* distrust of management, lack of honesty, ineffective in dealing with issues, no leadership, many managers and no management
* too busy constantly "re-orging" to pay any attention to science, non-creative science, management refuses to understand and support scientific principals
* lack of funding; lack of support for beginning scientists, non-competitive costs
* 2 or 3 tiered pay structure in the division, below average salaries
* lack of job security, lay-off's continue to be high in everyone's mind, "disposable employees"
* lack of a supportive environment, sense that even if your job is well done it (and you) are not valued, lack of respect
* NO morale
* working in a state of decay
* LLNS/LLNL putting more and more obstacles in the way of getting work done
and finally, which does not bode well for this input, a wide-spread sense that management "requests feedback so that they can say that they requested feedback and can appear to have been interested in peoples concerns, without actually addressing them."
But since I do believe communication is always important, I will forward the compiled comments to both the division leader and the AD.
I have also asked who is on the WorkLife committee that requested this input and what they do - and plan to do with this input, will let you know!
Keep up the great work!