What are the opinions of the community, of an NNSA lab piloting a
federalization effort? This would be similar to how NETL is run, where
the lab is staffed and managed by US Government Employees. While most
the National Labs are Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOCOs), only
NETL is a Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOGO), where lab staff
and management are DOE employees.
NASA is an agency to look at, most of their sites (for the expectation of JPL) are federally staffed.
Some pros:
-Prestige of being a National Lab AND Federal Employee
OPM benefits:
-All federal holidays off, and usually the Secretary grants a few hour early dismissal the day before a holiday
-FERS retirement, which includes a pension/TSP(401k) hybrid
Military credit toward retirement
-Federal health plan
-Vacation days:
1-3 years of service: 4 hours every 2 weeks
3-15 years of service: 6 hours every 2 weeks
+15 years of service: 8 hours every 2 weeks
-Veterans preference (only a pro for vets)
-Job stability
Cons:
-Limited by GS-Scale: most employees will be capped at $155k
-Veterans preference: a veterans that meets the minimum qualifications may be hired above a better candidate
For example a 2.7 GPA MS from a Cal State School who is a veteran, will likely be hired over a 3.8 PhD from Stanford or MIT
-Subject to government RIFs, furloughs, pay freeze
-Government will not buy employees coffee, bottled water, food, or other business expenses (perks) that a contractor can get away with justifying.
-Government employees are held rigidly to OPM per diem rates
-Less of a buffer of political BS coming from NNSA HQ on technical work
NASA is an agency to look at, most of their sites (for the expectation of JPL) are federally staffed.
Some pros:
-Prestige of being a National Lab AND Federal Employee
OPM benefits:
-All federal holidays off, and usually the Secretary grants a few hour early dismissal the day before a holiday
-FERS retirement, which includes a pension/TSP(401k) hybrid
Military credit toward retirement
-Federal health plan
-Vacation days:
1-3 years of service: 4 hours every 2 weeks
3-15 years of service: 6 hours every 2 weeks
+15 years of service: 8 hours every 2 weeks
-Veterans preference (only a pro for vets)
-Job stability
Cons:
-Limited by GS-Scale: most employees will be capped at $155k
-Veterans preference: a veterans that meets the minimum qualifications may be hired above a better candidate
For example a 2.7 GPA MS from a Cal State School who is a veteran, will likely be hired over a 3.8 PhD from Stanford or MIT
-Subject to government RIFs, furloughs, pay freeze
-Government will not buy employees coffee, bottled water, food, or other business expenses (perks) that a contractor can get away with justifying.
-Government employees are held rigidly to OPM per diem rates
-Less of a buffer of political BS coming from NNSA HQ on technical work
Comments
Let's face it, DOE/NNSA love the GOCO arrangement. It provides a fall guy and with the proper grease to the appropriate rails, it provides an NNSA manager a upward path of employment with the contractor. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You make be look bad, I'll put a knife in your back.
We already get RIFS and pay freezes here. I don't think Bechtel would use their contract award to stave off furloughs.
-Government will not buy employees coffee, bottled water, food, or other business expenses (perks) that a contractor can get away with justifying.
We used to get water in the hallway (not bottled but in big jugs) and coffee here at LANL until someone decided that is an unallowable cost. Concerning the other so called "perks" I don't know what that would be. Nobody has offered me any shares in LANS or bechtel.
-Government employees are held rigidly to OPM per diem rates
Same at LANS. I get federal per diem as well as federal lodging, which when I worked in Geneva usually paid for a hotel in the red light district.
-Less of a buffer of political BS coming from NNSA HQ on technical work . Really? remember when we got the scandal with the "conference" in Las Vegas? Since then the DOE spends more money in checking that conferences do not cost more than 500K than the actual cost is. Just check the interview with retiring office of science director Brinkmann?
At least we would not be paying Heather Wilson money for not doing anything.
The GOCO model is better, if its allowed to function as intended. You need a real contractor that brings a culture and business model from its other operations - that is what the Government is supposedly paying for in its management fee.
At LLNL, the LLC came in with the explicit aim of exercising the UC culture from the Lab. I was in a meeting during transition where a senior new LLC manager said this as fact. In its place, they brought nothing - not even Bechtel's real culture. I've meet several current and past Bechtel employees, not connected at all with the LLC or Lab, who just love working for Bechtel. What is in place at LLNL is not a Bechtel or UC culture, its vacuum filled by the personal will and whim of whatever PAD or AD loaned from an LLC parent company.
For a GOCO national labs that are FFRDCs, they should be run by single research universities or institutions - not fake LLCs that bring zero culture into the lab.
Looks at the best GOCO non-DOE national lab in the country. NASA's JPL, run by Caltech. Annual federally provided budget is $1.5 Billion and about 6,000 employees. Most there feel that they are NASA employees carrying out NASA's mission, but they actually work for Caltech and the Lab Director (approved by NASA) is a Caltech VP.
DOD's Lincoln Lab has a similar structure.
The GAO should really do an assessment of the management contracting approaches used at both JPL and LLNL, and see which is most cost effective and productive for the taxpayers. I am positive it won't be the for-profit LLC model.
How about dumping the whole contractor owner concept in favor of employee owned? With profit sharing, the quality of work would improve a lot."
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This is probably the smartest comment I have ever read on this blog!
Too bad congress or DOE will never move in that direction. I still plan on passing on the suggestion to Swalwell's, Boxer's, and Feinstein's offices, just out of principal.
It would be more of a factor in the security fields, and there I think veterans bring more to the table than someone that has never served.
The types of people it will help are military officers or GI Bill graduates. A lot of the officers actually have PhDs, as the Air Force and Navy do a good job with graduate education of their officers. The other types of people you will see are the fellows that served their 3 years and then used the GI Bill to go to school. Frankly, both these types of guys I have seen come into the labs make better employees the the kids that never did anything in the real world besides school, even if the vets did not come from a top tier school or have a perfect GPA.
I don't know what lab you work at, but to the best of my knowledge LLNL isn't peddling warheads so the profit sharing in that area of expertise is pretty low.
NNSA does head-hunt quite a few lab and university stars at the Appointee/SES levels. This is how the LLCs control NNSA. These people in power keep churning out the award fees, and then get million dollar jobs when they finish the federal "service." The comment above if referring to the average NNSA Neanderthal in the GS ranks.
The best NNSA managers just send the money and stay out of the way.
You are a winner because of your attitude. Those who disagree with you are losers because of theirs. Simple. Everyone has a job to do. If you make your colleagues' jobs easier, they will return the compliment and everyone will win. The ones who got trophies for "participation" in school will not get this concept.
Portrait of a Nifnik anticipating ignition.