"Hanford company settles retaliation lawsuit after engineer raises nuclear safety concerns"
"Bechtel National has reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by a former employee at the Hanford vitrification plant now under construction...Hall was making his second retaliation complaint against Bechtel...Bechtel said that the issues Hall raised were ones that had previously been raised, investigated and addressed. It claimed that Hall was trying to divert attention from his own shortcomings...He was mandated to participate in a performance improvement plan in late summer 2017, which was a sham because the decision to end his employment had already been made, said court documents"
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article234314452.html
"Bechtel National has reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by a former employee at the Hanford vitrification plant now under construction...Hall was making his second retaliation complaint against Bechtel...Bechtel said that the issues Hall raised were ones that had previously been raised, investigated and addressed. It claimed that Hall was trying to divert attention from his own shortcomings...He was mandated to participate in a performance improvement plan in late summer 2017, which was a sham because the decision to end his employment had already been made, said court documents"
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article234314452.html
28 comments:
"He was mandated to participate in a performance improvement plan in late summer 2017, which was a sham because the decision to end his employment had already been made, said court documents"
It's a standard tactic. Rattle the employee for a long time in the attempt to soften him up, then get him to admit or confess to his own problems in the hope from his perspective, that the work situation will suddenly improve. Then you fire the guy and use his own words against him if he takes you to court. Shameful.
Bechtel good...LANL bad. The cowboy culture is starting to spread.
7:26 is not wildly off the mark with the dichotomy. However the real choice is between scientific understanding and corporate profit.
However the real choice is between scientific understanding and corporate profit.
8/28/2019 6:00 AM
They only seem mutually exclusive if you have professional blinders on. Lots of corporations do great scientific research. And pay their research scientists very well. Sounds like you are a university type.
I find these lawsuits hilarious. Especially if your know the people in question. Here is my question to any managers on the blog: How to do fire a non performing or incompetent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone?
6:11 Bechtel isn’t exactly known for their great research. They aren’t too bad at putting concrete in weird places at taxpayer expense.
"Here is my question to any managers on the blog: How to do fire a non performing or incompetent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone?"
Here are the real juicy questions:
How do you fire a performing and competent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone and why would you do it?
"Here is my question to any managers on the blog: How to do fire a non performing or incompetent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone?"
Here are the real juicy questions:
How do you fire a performing and competent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone and why would you do it?
You can't do either apparently. Jobs for Life.
6:11 Bechtel isn’t exactly known for their great research. They aren’t too bad at putting concrete in weird places at taxpayer expense.
8/28/2019 8:30 PM
Same could be said for their majority partner UC these days....
Same could be said for their majority partner UC these days....
8/29/2019 12:36 PM
That is so stupid.
"You can't do either apparently. Jobs for Life."
You must be a Lab newbie and that's cool. We need you. Of course they can fire a good employee. Research it a little more.
Of course they can fire a good employee. Research it a little more.
8/29/2019 8:59 PM
Who gets to define "good"?
"How do you fire a performing and competent employee at the lab who hasn’t directly violated a security protocol or stabbed someone and why would you do it?"
Nobody seems to want to respond to this question. Clearly there is a cookbook of methods to actually fire "good" lab employees where subsequently, the employee wins in court for wrongful termination, breach of contract, etc. In those cases, the court views the contractor's stated reasons for employee terminations as pretextual.
"Who gets to define "good"?"
The "who" depends on when and where you ask the question. For those directly tasked to execute an employee termination plan, the "who" must unequivocally be the contractors most senior leadership. Otherwise if the termination was knowingly without merit, it could lead to stress and lingering remorse. In court however, the "who" gets purposefully murky, with some managers claiming they were just following orders, while other managers claiming they were unaware of the events leading to the employee termination. In any case, the courts do not view favorably a "who" that creates "good" or "bad" definitions on an employee specific Etch A Sketch for their own convenience or to provide a fast track to an undisclosed agenda. I hope this answers your leading question. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend.
9/01/2019 1:28 PM
Aggrieved employee. Ho Hum. Get a life, or at least a job you can stand doing.
Aggrieved employee. Ho Hum..."
A comment from someone whose skills and value are likely at best "Ho Hum". This is the new mantra at the labs at the expense of mission objectives. What a taxpayer disaster. Hopefully this person is not in a Lab leadership position, but probably is.
Another aggrieved employee. Not surprising. The list (and there is one) grows and waits for RIF time.
Ho Hum, indeed. There are many, many people out there that can do the job, properly cheaper too. Keep that in mind. What people at LANL and LLNL did before mattered, what they do not does not matter. If you have any doubt about this than ask yourself this, would anyone ever have dreamed of privatizing the labs during the cold war? No. Kinda tells you the value of these places now.
"There are many, many people out there that can do the job, properly cheaper too. Keep that in mind."
Once the NNSA accepts a lab contractor on its face value, its hard to root them out for poor performance in favor of other contractors "out there that can do the job properly and cheaper too". Look how long it took the NNSA to rid LANL of LANS. "Keep that in mind".
More than half of LANS (UC) is STILL at LANL.
Bechtel was the nasty, corrupt, greedy, bullying part of LANS. UC has been it it for the duration since the start. Commitment and service are the key to success.
UC IS the incompetent, hands off, do nothing part that let the lab get corporatized through its lack of management in the first place.
UC is not incompetent in how it is managing and providing my extremely generous pension after 30 yeas of service. I never once saw a misstep or a problem from UC while I was in their employ. Your UC gripes are your own. Get over them, if your sanity means anything to you.
There have certainly been some very weak Regents (Dynes, Foley, Napolitano, Tauscher etc all.). However, on the whole, they’ve done a good job managing Los Alamos over the years. I expect they can do so in the future.
I’m confused, being at LANL for decades, what does UC do? Appoint lab directors. Now I KNOW the last 4 to 5 directors have been let say less than liked by the LANL folks on the this blog. So what else does UC do? Nothing. You say they have done a “good job” but the one thing they do, you do not like the results of. They are a hands off organization that has led to the downfall of this great institution.
You seem to conveniently forget that "this great institution" rose to greatness under exclusively UC management. Well, maybe with a little help from the Zia Corporation.
3:21 pm
UC was a “Hanger on” to Oppenheimer, Bradbury, Teller, and many others. As these great people who were called to action by the Great War, not UC, left or retired from the laboratory, the slow fade began. Did NNSA play its part in the demise, oh yes. Did the Test ban play its part, oh yes. Is UC trying to revitalize our lab? No. How many UC post docs? How many UC graduate hires? Truly, what does UC do that Battelle can’t do?
I understand defending LANL but defending UC makes no sense to me.
Nice try Boris, but we Americans refer to it as World War II, not the Great Patriotic War, as you Ruskies refer to it
Post a Comment