As a non-profit "public service organization", will Triad employees at LANL
request an annual release of all Triad employee salaries and raises?
request an annual release of all Triad employee salaries and raises?
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
You will have to wait until a non-profit submits their taxes.
Given how mad Mason was when he found out how underpaid he was as ORNL Director compared to the weapons labs' Directors in the Stimulus Act transparency requirement, I doubt he will share his new deal.
You are probably correct, and the suspicion of pay inequity would no doubt spread among employees of the for-profit contractor LLNS, the surviving close relative of LANS.
It is not a "recipe for disaster" for a reasonably competent manager to communicate to his or her valued employees how raises or salaries come to be. It was effectively done for years prior to LANS and LLNS. It would only be a "recipe for disaster" if said manager couldn't provide supportive reasoning for raises in a given year or set of years. The recently departed LANS failed in part by adopting a management centric philosophy (like yours) where worker bees were expendable commodities to be spoken to and not heard from. As to your bold Fortune 500 company reference as it relates to government funded DOE contractors with track records of faIlure, accidents, or missed milestones, a little humility is in order. Hopefully Triad will come to realize that employees working at LANL are its greatest resource.
Or tax payers.
"Tell me a Fortune 500 company that makes employee salaries public?"
Tell me a non-profit company that makes all its money from the government that is part of the Fortune 500.
By the way the reason that companies keep the salaries not public is because they have to compete with each other for employees, and information is leverage. This makes sense in a free market of competing companies it does not make sense in something like a DOE lab.
Taking bribes or gifts is a Q-Clearance no no, except when shrouded in a performance cycle and received in secret from your DOE for profit contractor employer? Surely such a contractor wouldn't dare use selective employee pay outs to grease the skids in any self serving manner at the expense of DOE missions. Then again, Bechtel was accused of lobbying Congress with taxpayer dollars, so there's that.
November 24, 2018 at 8:53 PM
Absolutely correct, but irrelevant to the question of making salaries public. "How raises come to be" and "reasoning for raises" is information employees deserve. What each of their coworkers is making is not. You've obviously never been a manager.
This blog topic seems to focus on the fact that LANS and LLNS bonuses and raises have ran open loop (went dark) more than a decade ago and this may have created the opportunity for unsupported disparities in the pay structure. The "recipe for disaster" is not a hardship for Triad or LLNS employees, but it might be an uncomfortable and perhaps unexplainable hardship for those responsible for setting unsupportable pay disparities in motion, and for those that carried the water or were complicit with unsupportable pay disparity actions. LANS had its heyday but like Warren Buffett once said, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."
November 25, 2018 at 5:33 PM
I don't think that is the issue. I get that some people always get upset that so and so down the hall makes 1k more. The real issue is when it comes to seeing managers making 500k when they are in charge of 30 people and are known to be a total idiot. I think the American people deserve to see this. Trust me under LANS we had lots and lots of this kind of stuff, we went from 25 divisions to 125 divisions the pay went up 3.5 times or more. Tell where is the value added?
I agree with you. Yes there will always be questions about "1k down the hall" differences in pay, but the real gorilla in the room are salaries among line managers and above who may have salaries way out of step with the lateral "career ladder" compensation approach. Why this unchecked disparity in pay occurs at for-profit managed labs is obvious enough. Time for across the board salary audits at the labs.
And taxpayers resent 500k salaries for bad management at places it funds for work that is critical. Just saying. You know a functioning lab may just be a concern for the lives of everyone in America. Your call.
Correct. We do have many high quality lab managers, but many subpar managers will resist any examination of their off the radar salaries for fear of how disclosures of those salaries might impact their future raises if corrective measures are warranted.
November 28, 2018 at 6:44 PM
"Just saying," but not thinking. "Taxpayers" in general don't know what management salaries are at government funded facilities, nor do the vast majority care. Simple fact. You care, and are looking for support for your opinion. Look elsewhere. Just FYI, a young relative, a 30-something female with a bachelors degree in engineering, just got a $100k + job in technical sales. You might want to look at the fact that $500k for a technical manager position is not all that uncommon anymore. Salary-wise, the national labs are somewhat behind the curve.
Jobs in sales or business have a built in mechanism to control the salaries, which is the free market. There is no such thing at the labs. Also a good manager in the free market can earn a very good salary but not a bad manager. I never liked the argument that "the american people don't know and don't care about the labs" as a justification to just let the labs be mediocre and have overpaid bad management. Ideally the American people do want a well functioning top lab and people at LANL have a good idea of what that is, it i just that people take advantage of the systems and/or ignorance of others. There are many a 500k manager at LANL and LLNL that sprung up after privatization that simply have no added value or even negative value to the system. It is no mystery and if they had been doing good jobs there would be little in the way of complaints. You seem to have the approach that "it is broken and bad but there is nothing you can do about so stop trying". This by the way is the same attitude that several high level managers have expressed.
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Good point, and I bet the number below DDIR and DIR is below $350k, especially after the LANS folks are gone.
November 29, 2018 at 9:29 PM"
You may be right or you may be wrong, they only way to know is to make the numbers public. I would bet the number of 500k is much higher than you think, especially with the large number of people that essentially had two jobs, bonuses, compensation and bizarre perks. Perhaps with LANS gone some of these people are gone and the bonus system took a hit. Do not understate how much money was coming in from bonuses. The rumors is that much of the bonus that the managers was getting was not even part of the fee as they had figured a way around this. It was getting close to the Wolf of Wall Street level with some of the things that had been said. By the way this also part of the reason for the contract change, which was the increasing number of "ethical issues" that had been occurring. If you don't believe me just look at some of the recent statements of Mason on ethics and it is not hard to read between the lines about what he is alluding to.
Under LANS there must have been at least 10-20 people raking in over 1 million and 50-120 or more at 500k. Anyone who got in the bonus action was making big money. The bonuses started out at 100k at the lowest levels with something like 5-10 levels at 50k a shot so that the Director could get up to 500k or more in just bonuses during a good year. It I no wonder that the PBIs was a huge driving force for the upper levels of management and why they so desperately wanted to keep the contract. Bechtel knows what it is doing when it comes to the corporate bribery. Think about this, for a 25k bonus most people will probably not do anything unethical especially if you already make 200k a year but a 100k bonus is something hard to turn down, even for the most self-conscious person, so that is the starting bonus number. Everyone knew, espically the management that LANS was a disaster but they where fanatical in keeping it, and ask yourself what would you do if offered 100-300k extra every year? Some would say that you would have to be foolish not to take this money even if you knew perfectly well that it was very bad for the country. This also explains the strange post-modern view and discussions one often got from management when asked about LANS. It also explains why high level managers tried to be invisible, they knew what was going on was wrong but the money was just too good.
Yup, and those on the receiving end of those bribes convince themselves their deluxe raises and bonuses are just part of the "free market" for-profit contractor norm. Like an earlier commenter said, "Taking bribes or gifts is a Q-Clearance no no, except when shrouded in a performance cycle and received in secret from your DOE for profit contractor employer?" Recognized high performers don't need secret compensation for their accomplishments, only the beneficiaries of favoritism, cronyism, or those on the pay to play cycle, require compensation secrecy. A compensation audit is way overdue at LANL and LLNL.
Look LANL and in many ways LLNL had been disasters for many decades. NNSA and DOE realized that
business model was the way to go and that is why the labs went for profit. What they did not anticipate was just how arrogant the cowboys are. They should have known better from how Nanos was treated that they are not dealing with regular people. Unfortunately Bechtel could not deal with the workforce the way a regular company can by laying off the people that are not on board and bring in the people with right attitude. At a place like LANL you would start from scratch. I am very bitter about how things turned out and how so many great and heroic people have been left behind. You can say what you want about Mecheles, Montana, Hook, Mello, Dorn, and Nanos but they are heroes who deserve much more credit than they have been given not to mention compensation for service. I simply cannot believe how things have turned out, perhaps I should let it go, but I am the type of person that when I see something is not right I need to say something.
blathered December 7, 2018 at 11:24 AM.
Wrong. What NNSA did not anticipate was how incompetent and greedy the California Carpetbaggers were.
December 8, 2018 at 8:01 PM
Exactly, read the Zinner from 1970 report, UC had no business running the labs, Chris Mechels
has talked about this repeatedly, yet you do not listen? It is almost as through you think he may not know what he is talking about or is bitter about something. Now some of you may say that 1970 may not be relevant to now and that is your opinions. Some also say that the Zinner report does not actually say what Mechles says it does, that too is your opinion. Some of you may point out that since 1965 that if LANL was not great than how did it make all those systems that work and our still working today, some even may say some of the best work was actually done in 70s as witnessed by all the successful tests. Fine, that is also your opinion. Some even think Mechels is not exactly a rational person and has no real understating of LANL, that is your opinion. Some say that he may be bitter about fired or effectively forced out of LANL fine that is your opinion. Some even say the earth is a globe, again that is just your opinion. For those of you that believe in the globe earth than please read the Zinner report.
Ok it is all only opinion, therefore 8.01PM must be exactly right.
December 8, 2018 at 8:01 PM
Maybe I am just reading this wrong but I would guess you are just a tad bitter. I could be wrong, but I am just saying you might want to work on that.