Anonymously contributed (unconfirmed):
layoffs at NIF! couple of nif employees told me that 40 people went out the door on 11/01/11.
layoffs at NIF! couple of nif employees told me that 40 people went out the door on 11/01/11.
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...
Comments
They'll have you with box in hand moving out the front door of the lab before you know what hit you. Fast, clean.... and ruthless.
November 5, 2011 7:58 PM
Great, LLNS mismanages funds and hacks working level people. I bet NOT ONE manager was let go due to this mismanagement. Another operating theme of LANS/LLNS.
They better get some great results. If not, LLNL will vaporize faster than a hohlraum.
How on earth do 60 people cots 30 million dollars? They get paid 500k each?
How on earth do 60 people cots 30 million dollars? They get paid 500k each?
November 6, 2011 5:48 PM
Yup! A well-paid LANL/LLNL/SNL scientist with salary ($160,000), benefits (vacation, sick leave, Holidays, matching 401K, health, dental, vision, life insurance, etc.), overhead (lights, computer, heat, supplies, etc.), and nuclear facilities (plutonium, waste, tritium, high explosives, etc.). And, that's not an overpaid LLNL/LANS manager! That's why no one wants to do business with us!
If employees were laid off they have to have been slo, flex-term, or out sourced (I was in the lab's flexible workforce for several yrs before becoming career if that matters).
Post, clarify what the status off the employees that were laid off were?
Baloney. The trigger level for the WARN Act is 50 people per month. And non-employees (SLO, contractors, etc.) don't count against the 50.
Returning employees to their matrix home is also not a layoff, although it can end up causing one.
Thanks for the added info.
November 8, 2011 7:47 AM
That may be, however, Congress is drafting legislation to "protect" the defense programs from the across the board cuts if the super-committee cannot "do their job". One thing for sure, is this would give LANS/LLNS another opportunity to "right size". I also guarantee most of the RIFees wil be 50+ or older.....AS ALWAYS.
I'm sorry for the families that will have to go through the holidays like this. Typical, they dump the employees before they have to pay their holidays off.
Wow, you must be a lab old-timer! The world has radically changed at the Bechtel-ized "for-profit" managed NNSA labs. Those old days are long gone. If someone doesn't meet Bechtel's strict "business operation" desires of the new management team then they are gone, career FTE staff or not. And don't expect to see any severance payout, either. They simply fire you.
The labs layoff that began in 2008 was after contract transition. If involuntary separation is under the policy definition of "layoff". It does requires DOE/NNSA concurrence:
http://lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com/2008/04/doennsa-approves-llnls-involuntary.html
http://lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com/2008/04/doennsa-approves-llnls-involuntary.html
November 9, 2011 11:47 AM
And DOE/NNSA will quickly rubber stamp the RIF as: APPROVED.
November 8, 2011 7:47 AM
"Starting" a RIF list! I got news for you pal, LANS had a RIF list when they took control of the Lab. Knapp implemented his "list" in 2008 when he forced ~30 engineers out their jobs in W and WT-Divisions. LANS is ready, willing, able and excited to RIF people, on a minute notice. The question now is, are they going to implement it. Bring it on Knapp, bring it on!
However, it will be clear the cuts are coming before then so you can expect lab budget managers to begin taking layoff actions by either late next summer or the fall of 2012.
It seems unlikely to me that layoffs would be instituted during the middle of FY2012, as the effect of the budget cuts won't hit until the FY2013 budget. However, be aware the these automatic cuts will be accumulative with a continuation of the cutting in FY2014, FY2015, FY2016, etc. A decade of cuts would ensue and the NNSA would be looking at drastic downsizing.
If they are smart they would have everything ready to go Fall 2012 which would mean things would
have to be in process the summer of 2012. My guess is they will do nothing untill possible the cuts actually hit and only then throw something together very fast and ill thought out.
Was anyone walked out the door during this? Or were they reassigned to other part of LANL? Unless you have a printing press, the budget of W/WT is not time invariant.
November 12, 2011 10:40 AM
Just FYI, the expression is "couldn't care less." Think about it.
Instead,we got the LLNS bureaucracy superimposed on the UC bureaucracy. NO cleanup was done.
Good job NNSA!
Additional cuts by eliminating job titles containing: "special project", "assistant", "associate", "chief", "officer", "specialist", etc.
Stop that. Putting down others is just part of the culture you have gotten used to, but it is by no means normal. It is dysfunctional to a workspace as well as a blog site.
Stop that. Putting down others is just part of the culture you have gotten used to, but it is by no means normal. It is dysfunctional to a workspace as well as a blog site.
November 14, 2011 5:45 PM
What is dysfunctional to society in general is the loss of the understanding of language and its roots. If you don't understand why you say what you say, you are functionally illiterate.