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!
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It turned out that even dead wood with good management sycophant skills got to do that. I thought this cannot happen with a private company whose intended goal was to save LLNL money!
Had a boss at LLNL who was retiring. He came to my office and was pissed that the division was not going to hire him back. Had some harsh words for the diction leader who rejected his request. Eventually he went to LANL for his second salary. Thought it was strange.
1/30/2020 5:17 PM
For many this was true, however there was plenty of dead wood.
Also note that the pension income on top of a salary that a so-called double-dipper has coming in doesn’t go as far as it would if the person were fully retired because the pension income is taxed at a higher marginal tax rate.
BTW, I’m retired from LLNL on TCP1 and declined an opportunity to go back to work at the Lab part-time. I’m enjoying retirement and wasn’t interested in trading my free time for a part-time salary that would be taxed at a high marginal tax rate due to my pension. I can only conclude that most retirees who go back to work at the Labs do so not so much for the money but because they want to work.
-Doug
Yes many LLNS employees took TCP2 and double dipped at the 2007 transition. That was allowed. Upon retirement though, all of them were subject to having their thousands of hours of accrued sick disappear without the TCP1 sick leave conversion to service credit. How did many LLNS TCP2 employees address this problem? Once those TCP2 employees approached their planned retirement date, they addressed the problem by rapidly consuming sick leave days before or after vacation days, or by frequently taking 3 days of sick leave week after week to not trigger a doctors note for the sick leave usage. If you were a "good old boy", LLNS looked the other way. If you weren't, your sick leave usage was micromanaged with scrutiny.
Give me a break!
In the case of the contractor change and TCP1 and TCP2, for the lucky ones who were already close to or above retirement age, the decision was a no-brainer. For most people, though, the decision was an agonizing one. I had a difficult time deciding, too. One thing that influenced my decision was that I heard a rumor that George Miller had said that he was concerned that many employees were making the wrong choice with their TCP1 versus TCP2 decision. I thought about it some and guessed which choice he thought was the proper choice.
-Doug
I was in that class of folks. After the transition I did use up a lot of sick leave. Knee surgery, heart attack and a back injury that happened at work and I still had a bunch on the books that went poof when I walked out the door.
So not everyone was bending the rules.
But if you want to see rules bent, see how many people who are elected to Washington DC offices who are not millionaires when the entered but are when they leave.
A few more facts to add to this discussion:
1. UC/ LLNL Employees hired BEFORE Jan.1 1990 were FULLY vested in the UC Pension and retiree health care plans after 10 years of service. I was hired in 1986 therefore I was FULLY vested in the UC plan by 1997, a full 10+ years before the ill fated transition.
2. I chose TCP2 as I was already at UC retirement age. It was a no brainer to take my UC pension, work another 10 years and bank the money, as well as, LLNS offered me a generous 9% matching 401K.
3. If you all remember there were certain employees who were exempt from the Black Thursday perp walk layoff. I was one of those, as our management had already cut our group to the bone. They prepared and positioned this transition a full year before it took place, by laying off contractors, of which our group had 3, we were now down to 2 FTE's thus we had exempt status. Cant run a group with 1 FTE.
4. Neither I nor my peers created these rules or this situation. Management did. This is what they offered, I made a choice and took the money put up with all the Bechtel corrupt BS shenanigans for another 10 years and ran.
Never looked back and couldn't be happier.....So long suckers......Good Luck.
Bravo for doing the right thing for you and your family!