Does LLNS have a structured suicide prevention program that strives to reach out and help lab employees with suicidal thoughts, and if warranted, the authority to investigate employee and management conduct leading up to a suicide event without employer bias?
In some cases, the California Courts may consider "severe emotional stress" caused by "cyber bullying" and "hateful messages" leading to a suicide as a "wrongful death", making it possible for the family members of the deceased to hold the offending party liable in Court.
https://www.jmllaw.com/blog/wrongful-death-and-cyberbullying-how-social-media-trolls-and-bullies-can-be-held-liable-for-suicide.shtml
23 comments:
There are external suicide prevention hotlines and one can speak or meet with a member of LLNS Health Services for support too. As far as an unbiased investigation where the employee's management is alleged to have been a contributing factor to the employee's emotional stress and or to prevent future emotional stress and loss of life? To my knowledge it does not exist. No transparent "lessons learned" here. Having said this, your life is vastly more important than an employer's conduct or response to your situation so please seek help if you need it.
Yeah, there is nothing. Have heard countless stories of abusive managers who create hostile work environments, and middle management and HR are nothing but spineless. It’s a small amount of nut job managers, but overall the institution clearly doesn’t know how to remove them.
Once your a club member, the "abusive" and "nut job" managers are protected by the club. As said many times on this blog, LLNS management can't ever be in the wrong. Yes, perhaps it's a small amount of "nut job managers", but unfortunately, group complicity is required to enable the pattern "nut job". It's too bad the high quality reputable managers that employees want to work for have to be associated with the abusive ones.
Hear, hear. I’d love for Budil and LLNL HR to read these comments, and for Budil to then throw out said HR. Used to believe HR at the lab was better than industry. Nope, same incompetent and useless muppets. HR are people from third-tier educational backgrounds who have no real abilities, so they go into HR and pretend to add value.
Have heard stories at NIF about unethical managers stealing information from where they came from overseas, affairs, making up stuff against employees. Same in WCI, mentors pushing up staff into leadership positions who are technically incompetent and even WORSE as managers, displaying never ending unhinged behavior. As the previous person said, small amounts can have big impacts. MANY people are bailing because of a few terrible managers/leads.
So where in history will LLNS Art Wong fall in? An HR protector of LLNS employee rights, or a subservient wuss of LLNS Staff Relations?
When you have manager’s giving medical diagnosis without a medical license / education why would LLNS need hire a staff to deal with this issue.
Staff Relations, lol. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I were one those people. Even worse than HR, dumb and condescending. Staff are voting with their feet, out the door and to better places.
Kim needs to realize her good ideas are not really flowing down and being implemented. Bad managers take the guidance and just reformulate to maintain the status quo. The only way is to be strong and remove these people.
Plenty of suicides to go around. I’ve witnessed four in my Group. Three were clearly stress-related.
"When you have manager’s giving medical diagnosis without a medical license / education why would LLNS need hire a staff to deal with this issue."
Your attempt at sarcasm related to a suicide prevention topic is repulsive. One need not have a medical license and education to clearly observe managers that are open loop uncaring jerks to employees.
Unlike the Ford Motor Company, that must compete in the free market in real time with Toyota, GM, etc. for a customer base, LLNS has no such worries requiring a change in "Lab Cuture".
"Written by Andrew Frick, Ford vice president of U.S. and Canada sales, the letter began: "It has come to our attention that a limited number of dealerships are interacting with customers in a manner that is negatively impacting customer satisfaction and damaging to the Ford Motor Company brand and Dealer Body reputation.""
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2022/01/07/ford-f-150-lightning-dealerships-sales/9129717002/
Looks like 9:52 doesn’t understand the statement of fact of certain managers playing doctor on site!!!!!
“When you have manager’s giving medical diagnosis without a medical license / education why would LLNS need hire a staff to deal with this issue.”
Similar rationalizations:
I don’t know if that person is really being beaten up, after all, I’m not a police officer.
I don’t know if that person is being sexually assaulted, I’m not a suburban sociologist.
I don’t know if that lab employee is being harassed and abused after all, I don’t have a medical education, therefore I won’t speak up and my conscious is clear.
Looks like 9:52 doesn’t understand the statement of fact of certain managers playing doctor on site!!!!!
10/10/2022 5:11 PM
That's not "a statement of fact." It's your opinion. If you claim it is a fact, the burden is on you to prove it.
If you claim it is a fact, the burden is on you to prove it.
10/21/2022 5:18 PM
That is not how it works, the burden is for you prove it is not true.
That is not how it works, the burden is for you prove it is not true.
10/21/2022 6:23 PM
In grade school I learned "you cannot prove a negative." Did you sleep through that lesson? No one in a US court has ever been required to prove something is not true. Prosecutors make charges and are required to prove them. Defendants are not guilty if the prosecutors fail.
The "burden of proof" discussion is interesting, but the bottom line with respect to the actual topic question for lab employees is simply this:
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy," Martin Luther King, Jr.
So, either you care, don't care, or are afraid (with good reason) to speak up.
Or, you care, but it's not your problem so speaking up is useless and irrelevant. I.e., stay in your own lane.
Dennis Patterson, a former Ethics and Employee Concerns Program Manager at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), wrote a 2014 book titled "Whistleblower:Justice over Discrimination and Ethics Violations". In this book, he referenced a 2007 tragic loss of life and possible suicide of an INL employee during a performance appraisal period.
In direct response to this loss of life in an INL employee address, INL Director Grossenbacher suggested they should "take effective steps as individuals, leaders, and managers to acknowledge and manage stress in the workplace". It appears INL Director Grossenbacher believed neither he or INL employees should "stay in your own lane", nor did the Director indicate "it's not your problem" on a matter of such magnitude. I would certainly like to hear LLNL Director Kimberly Budil's view on this topic.
In 2012, who were the senior NIF managers that may have had a disciplinary role of the 2012 NIF technician employee suicide?
What was learned from this tragic 2012 NIF tech loss of life event, and the other LLNS “plenty of suicides to go around” loss of life events, and what manager-employee practices have materially changed with LLNS if anything, since these tragic loss of life events?
Since the NIF Superintendent and others in the loop with the 2012 tech suicide are still in management, I conclude LLNS has unfortunately, made no material changes in employee suicide preventive measures, and doesn’t care in the least about it, because it’s not a NNSA metric of Lab performance. Wow.
Any LLNS manager that wants to remain a manager, or a LLNS employee for that matter, will not dare admit to a even a CRUMB of ownership or being a contributing factor to a LLNS employee suicide. This is an unspoken LLNS Modus Operandi.
The employee assistance program can help LNNL employees is crisis.
To schedule an appointment or for general information, please call 925-423-6609.
How does the LLNS employee assistance program address matters that may lead to an employee crisis in the first place, where the employees managers are potentially a contributing factor to the employee crisis? What authority if any, does the LLNS employee assistance program have to address manager promoted employee stress leading to a crisis? Your response is appreciated.
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