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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At the time of the contract change the lab made it abundantly clear that the retirement medical was provided by the contractor and whomever that was, that was the medical you got. That knowledge provided by the Lab / UC / LLNS made it clear that you were not going to be on UC medical in any form and if you agreed to further employment with the new entity, you accepted the new rules.
I applaud the result of the lawsuit but know that it didn't benefit me.
Really? Was that true for both TCP1 and TCP2?
Let's set the stage at what happened at the transition between UC/LLNS as far as benefits were concerned.
1. You're eligible for TCP1 and take it. You get a retirement medical plan that's more expensive and possibly not as good as the UC medical plan.
2. You are not eligible for TCP1 and must take TCP2. The retirement medical plan for TCP2 is eligibility to a reduced cost pool plan, not the plan given to TCP1.
3. You are eligible for TCP1 but freeze with UC - your retirement is UC and however much you can squirrel away into TCP2 - but you are given the TCP1 medical plan.
At contractor change over, HR makes it clear that the medical plans - both as you are employed and after you retire - are under the contractor operating the lab. This was news to all of us who had been there for decades. We thought our retirement and medical retirement were going to be UC. This was implied by UC and HR and this was why the retiree lawsuit prevailed. But like any class action lawsuit, you had to be a member of the class that had suffered damages. In this case you had to be retired and receiving medical in retirement from UC at the time it was taken away.
You can give LLNS and NNSA some credit. They gave employees who were vested a defined benefit plan - TCP1, and were given a decent retirement medical plan. You can argue that neither may have been as good as UC offerings, but it was something.
Now the TCP2 folks are in a different situation. They get their 401k and a discount ticket for some nebulous retirement medical. Both are less expensive to the Lab and NNSA and that's what NNSA wants and gets.
So LLNS as the contractor offered different retirement plans and different retirement medical plans, all of which is based on whether or not you were vested at the lab with a minimum of 5 years of service. If you had less that 5 years or were a new hire, no choice - it was TCP2 retirement and the low cost pool access medical.
-Doug
Those employees who retired when the UC contracted ended and continued with LLNS, have a retirement date of Oct 1, 2007, and never received UC health care coverage after retirement. Therefore, even though they are UC retirees, they do not appear to meet the criteria to be a Class Member.