Skip to main content

Changes in Employee Benefits Do Not Constitute Gross Mismanagement

DOE says, "Changes in Employee Benefits Do Not Constitute Gross Mismanagement"

A former UT-Battelle employee was demoted and eventually fired allegedly for "willful misconduct, failure to follow proper procedure, and loss of confidence", after she complained about a UT-Battelle announcement to discontinue all health insurance offerings except for its high deductible health plan (HDHP). Her appeal to the DOE OHA was denied. The DOE OHA noted the UT-Battelle move to a HDHP only health coverage was a "day-to-day" contractor matter and outside of Part 708 protections.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2020/05/f74/WBU-20-0005.pdf

Comments

Anonymous said…
Maybe it's not right, but is perfectly legal. Complain and/or find another job.
Anonymous said…
The takeaway here is employees of DOE contractors are basically on their own, period. Perhaps we should not be so displeased with SPSE or other organizations that have always tried to lift all employee boats. Why? Because forced acceptance of this or similar benefit reductions may eventually bite us at LLNL or LANL too.
Anonymous said…
SPSE did not try to lift all employee boats. When I came to the lab in 1974 I asked about joining and was told that as a 500 series tech, I could not join, not a scientist or engineer. Fast forward to the contract change 30+ years later they came to realize I wasn't worthless trash anymore and were open to their club. By that time, my interest in them had ceased to exist.

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

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...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

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!