https://www.thenation.com/article/society/los-alamos-laboratory-waste-fraud/
The nuclear weapons complex is so mismanaged that employees are collecting full salaries to play chess and catnap.
Reading the story the guy actually does more than a lot of LANL people. He has to show up to do nothing. In many places people show up once every two weeks talk and go home. Bizarre place. They should have the decency to at least let these electricians stay at home.
16 comments:
Sadly, for once, Mello is correct. When it comes to TA-55, not only is there no plan, there never was one. Combine that fact with weak-willed contractors like TRIAD, mindless oversight from the DNFSB, infinite taxpayer dollars, and a poorly educated captive local workforce and you have a recipe for disaster. It is beyond ridiculous.
At LLNL, you can burn through your accumulated TCP2 sick leave days by adding unjustified sick leave days before and after planned VAC days, or burn ~3 sick leave days in a row that doesn’t require a doctor’s confirmation of illness. Why? Because unlike TCP1 employees, sick leave totals are not converted to service credit at the point of retirement. TCP2 sick leave totals are simply lost. Therefore, many soon to be TCP2 retirees, burn through their accumulated sick leave like there is no tomorrow. No worries for such employees though.
If your a new hire at LLNL, with no accumulated sick leave and subsequently have to be hospitalized for kidney stone surgery etc., your LLNL manager will throw IWS or other workplace related documents on your hospital bed and declare you “at work” so you don’t have to take leave without pay. Again, no worries for the employee.
But if LLNL management doesn’t like you, they will require justification for every minute of your sick leave or they will claim you’ve committed time card fraud requiring disciplinary action.
7:28,
Yes, Livermore has the good ole boy system for using sick leave / being allowed to use sick leave / return to “work”.
Then on the same note there is overtime allocations and retention bonuses for the important folks sitting at home during Covid.
The LANL employees that do nothing remind me of GOP members of the house.
They are voting to impeach Biden (for no reason) , cut Pete Butigieg's and Karine Jean Pierre's salaries. How futile is that?
The do-nothing LANL employees are not the only ones. At LLNL, there are people at all levels who are allergic to work. In one particular department, if you demonstrate Good work and workmanship, you are labeled "the teacher's pet". You know who you are.
There's a story evidently that Fermi played chess at Hanford as he had nothing to do, either, their operations manager gave an interview in the 80's:
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/walter-simons-interview/
Fermi was very discreet about disagreements. He was a very pleasant person. He had a mind that raced all the time. For instance, if there was a little time to kill while they were loading the reactor, he would do equations in his head, with someone next to him with a calculator. You know, multiply 999 by 62 and divide by this and that, and he did that for amusement. His mind raced so much the only way he could relax was to walk on the desert. They would try to take him to a movie, and he would sit there and in five minutes he would have the whole plot figured out. He had a tremendous intellectual capacity, absolutely. Fermi was interested in chess and one or two of the men who were run of the mill technical people had spent a lot of time playing chess. Boy, when he found a good chess player, he tied him up. One boy was not particularly intellectual but he was a supremely good chess player. Fermi would come around calling for him, “Where’s so and so?”
At Livermore it seems that the low level management goes out of their way to stop the willing and able to perform their duties while the work is funneled to a select few. This group of the select few will only perform their work on Saturday and Sunday. It sounds good for the few taking advantage of that, but it affects the rest of us waiting on that work who need that portion of the project completed to deliver the test results to our group lead.
Sounds like my new secret quarterly goal should be to apply at LANL.
“At LLNL, you can burn through your accumulated TCP2 sick leave days by adding unjustified sick leave days before and after planned VAC days, or burn ~3 sick leave days in a row that doesn’t require a doctor’s confirmation of illness. “
Come on. It’s not enough to just double dip as a LLNS TCP2. You can’t expect me to follow through and just throw away thousands of hours of my sick leave, every though I knew this was a TCP2 requirement. LLNS won’t touch me because I’m part of the clique. So sad for other LLNS non-management employees right LSEO “Bob”?
Yes, you can use up your TCP2 sick leave in anticipation of it turning pumpkin when you retire. I had a ton of it on the books but knee surgery, a heart attack and a back injury (at work), did whittle that down a bit. It is sort on an insurance policy, but feel free to use it before you lose it, but it is a bit of a gamble.
Of course, you could be an honest fellow and only use it when needed, but integrity is so over rated these days.
“…but integrity is so over rated these days.”
No doubt, just look at how many former UC/LLNL quality managers were “turned” and have quietly profited under the direction of LLNS at the clear expense of the worker bees.
Reminds me of a joke that was told about the labs:
"How many people work at the lab?....About Half on a good day."
Now I know why there is a three year backlog to get even simple craft jobs completed, including plumbing and electrical. I have had an FSR open for over two years, with all engineering studies completed, and the job still isn't finished yet. Maybe one of these bored electricians can get it done??
11/17/2023 4:18
Sounds like your job isn’t Davis-Bacon work, you might have to wait another 3 years before you find another non-retainable unimportant electrician to come take a look at it.
You are right, I am only doing cutting edge national security science. I think that puts me at the bottom of the totem pole, right above fixing leaky roofs and crumbling stairs and well below pits.
10:24 please be honest. Nothing the Labs do qualifies as “cutting edge” anything. Those days are long gone.
10:24 please be honest. Nothing the Labs do qualifies as “cutting edge” anything. Those days are long gone.
11/19/2023 2:40 PM
There is still some small pockets of cutting edge science, but these are fading fast. LANL just put out a new statement about future directions and it is pretty clear science is out. The question is when do they officially get rid of the postdoc programs, LDRD and so on which are making less and less sense at LANL. With the priority on pits having a large LDRD makes little sense and is of little return to pit production. It needs to be reduced to fit with the portion of the lab that is science, or changed to be relevant to pits. The postdoc program is starting to make little sense either as postdocs are academic like positions to prepare for jobs in academic settings or in research science and make little sense in the future direction of LANL. Instead we should move toward in intern like approach where we test people out for a few years for training and to see if they fit in. This could attract people who would be a better in the mission. I am not saying to get rid of LDRD or the postdoc program entirely but reduce it size and rework a portion of it.
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