Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
Comments
Are LLNS employees somewhat silenced like the 2019 Hong Kong protestors (wearing masks) for fear of being singled out and dealt with? Is this where we are now? How far have we fallen? Wow!
12/02/2019 4:31 PM
Do you really think that someone who posts on this blog is will not be found out by LLNL?
WTF? In 75 years that would mean 20 people at year are dying at LANL? You would think someone might have heard about that. I think the last death at LANL was like 25 years ago with an electrical accident.
Sorry Mr Mello but when you say crap like this it just makes me dismiss everything else you have to say.
His use of the term Apartheid makes no sense, as Apartheid which was a South African political systems was based on a set of LAWS that treated people differently on race. There are no such laws at LANL and anyone can work at LANL including anyone from New Mexico or the United States.
He also is very confused about wealth inequality. Unequal wealth is not a driver of poverty, unemployment is the driver. You can have a very wealthy community with everyone in the upper and middle class but still have large inequality just as you can have community where everyone is in poverty but there complete equality. Mello has no knowledge of economics whatsoever.
From this, it is obvious that the new system is a huge success!
I think that you must be joking. I recently retired, but all the people I knew at the Lab who were around during the pre-transition days all believed that the days under UC management were better than the situation now under LLNS management. Doing quality science has been de-emphasized. ES&H has been taken to extremes. Benefits such as pensions and retiree health insurance are gone.
-Doug
12/04/2019 8:56 PM
Funny, I retired from LANL over 12 years ago and still get my retiree healthcare from the successor contractor (Triad.)
12/07/2019 7:00 PM
For new retirees... That better?
1. 1992, we stopped testing. Until that time the importance of designing and testing nuclear weapons meant that the scientist and engineers were setting the goals of the missions with the military and the management (UC) was along for the ride.
2. After the testing ceased DOE realized that all of those scientist and engineers belonged to them since they were no longer doing "active" projects that put holes in the desert. This was the beginning of the revenge of the C students.
3. Failures, real and imagined, necessitated a whipping boy, Congress slaps DOE's wrist and with St. Pete's help a whipping boy is created: NNSA in 2000.
4. NNSA realizes that to justify their existence they need to ride the herd tightly. Without a real "palpable" mission - Nukes - the paper chase of certifying weapons without testing goes into full swing and NNSA can start creating tighter and tighter rules that would have killed doing a new warhead project. Since a "real" product is not being impacted the rules can be oppressive without drastically affecting a deliverable.
5. More failures, again real and imagined causes the Congress to do it's knee jerk reaction causing the full rebids. This opens the door for a professional hack contractor - Bechtel - to enter the picture and they willingly jump to NNSA's rules and regs in order to maximize their profit. UC was a willing co-conspirator, their cut of the increased contract fee was a big jump from the previous 50+ years of management.
The change over to the new contract at LLNS did the following.
The overall budget did not go up. The huge increase in management fee and the dramatically increased cost of medical (instead of getting the group discount of all of the much lareger UC employee pool we were getting a group rate for just LLNS employees). Remember that many more people at Livermore decided to take TCP2 than what happened at LANL. That meant that LLNS had to do more matching of funds for the 401k which was money that had to come out of the Lab's budget immediately.
Couple all of that together and that's what got us into the layoff. In the eyes of NNSA they were probably putting a check mark on a spreadsheet noting they tightened up the ship.
Are the employees better or worse compared to the UC/LLNL era? From the viewpoint of benefits, most certainly not. If one joined the lab after the contract change you did not qualify for TCP1 and your retirement medical was certainly not what UC has to offer.
Are the missions better or worse under LLNS? The revenge of the C students of NNSA created more and more ticky tacky rules that consumed man hours of work and multiple layers of paperwork, all of which made missions more expensive at the labs.
Would a Triad like contractor be better for the LLNL? Well if they could push back on the ticky tacky rules and paperwork (which Bectel was only to happy to oblige to have the employees do), then a TRIAD sort of arrangement would be better for the missions.
A Triad like non profit would not be able to bring back a UC like retirement plan nor a gold plated medical retirement plan. The government has seen the cheaper alternatives and it won't go back.
12/08/2019 7:26 PM
That's kind of appropriate, since the DOE owns the labs.
That's kind of appropriate, since the DOE owns the labs.
——————
Of course. The issue is are they equip to do it. Since the early 1990s when they truly took control, I would submit the answer is no.
12/15/2019 5:35 PM"
Well we have seen the solution. Competent leave and people with little other job opportunities stay. Hence the downgrade from the one premier labs to what we have today. See if fixes itself.
12/16/2019 12:21 PM
Then why are you still complaining?
12/16/2019 5:38 PM
Oh, I am not the one that was complaining. I was merely pointing to someone that people do have choices and there is consequence to bad DOE management (revenge of the C students). Basically the solution is a personal one. If you can do better than an NNSA lab than move one, NNSA will not miss you, nor does it need you (at least it does not think it needs you), but we will never know until it is too late. If you cannot do better than these are pretty cush jobs. Heck maybe the really good jobs are NNSA administration.