Skip to main content

Changes in Employee Benefits Do Not Constitute Gross Mismanagement

Image
By scooby
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.
5/18/2020 5:23 PM
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.
5/18/2020 6:35 PM
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.
5/18/2020 7:45 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

By scooby
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...
155 comments
Read more

Trump is to gut the labs.

By scooby
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.
124 comments
Read more

Rumor corner

By scooby
LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
92 comments
Read more