Livermore Poised To Roll Out Salary Reduction/Closure Day Plan

Weapons Complex Monitor
February 28, 2013
Livermore Poised To Roll Out Salary Reduction/Closure Day Plan

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is poised to roll out a "salary reduction and closure day" plan to deal with the impact of across-the-board budget cuts that are set to go into effect Friday, lab Director Parney Albright told employees at an all-hands meeting yesterday. With the lab facing a potential $120 million shortfall, Albright detailed the potential plan in a recent memo to employees, outlining a plan that would temporarily reduce salaries for employees by 10 percent and bi-weekly closure days for full-time employees in which the lab would operate every other Friday similar to how it runs on a weekend. The plan could go into effect as soon as the week of March 10, but Albright said the lab might wait until after a Congress decides how it will fund the government after a Continuing Resolution expires March 27. “I realize any program involving a salary reduction is difficult for employees, but this plan would have less impact on employee benefits than a traditional furlough program,” Albright said. “This plan also mitigates concerns about the ability to maintain continuous business operations and, especially, safe operations in an environment of unpredictable staffing, while still reflecting the fact that work scope must change when the Lab's funding has been reduced.”

Alternate work schedules also would be temporarily suspended under the plan, and Parney said the lab is proposing to suspend the planned increase (from 5 percent to 7 percent) in employee contributions to the lab’s TCP1 pension plan. Benefits like 401(k) contributions, life insurance, vacation and sick leave payout would also be subject to the 10 percent reduction, Albright said. He said the lab is also considering restrictions on travel, reducing or canceling a Variable Compensation [aka salary bonus] Program, and reducing procurements, overtime and on-call pay. Albright emphasized that the program was not a typical furlough plan. “While sequestration may require us to temporarily reduce salaries and working hours, I felt it was important to look for ways to minimize impact to employees' benefits, such as vacation and sick leave, to the greatest extent possible,” he said.

Bad News Letter on Friday?

Bad News Letter on Friday?
I have been hearing that NNSA is about to issue the labs and plants official letters to start initiating furloughs and layoffs!!

Anyone else hear or seen this yet?

Summary of what Penrose said

All Hands:

- 10% salary reduction for all
- Likely Start: right after CR (3/27)
- Eliminate Variable Compensation Program
- Request to NNSA to delay jump from 5% to 7% pension contribution, no response yet.
- LLNS will make no contribution to help with any of this.
- Major impact is to pension. Even one day of this will disrupt the 36 continuous months for HAPC baking. If they do this once every 35 months going forward, no ones HAPC will ever rise again.

From Penrose

Director Parney Albright discussed the challenges the Laboratory faces in addressing the fiscal uncertainty in Washington D.C. during his quarterly update to employees Wednesday. Albright also highlighted recent Laboratory accomplishments and identified promising opportunities for broadening LLNL national security missions.

The most immediate fiscal challenge the Lab and all federal government agencies face is the "sequestration" almost certain to go into effect Friday, March 1, triggering automatic, across-the board spending cuts, Albright said. This will result in a 7.7 percent cut to appropriations for the Laboratory, a reduction of $120 million if sequestration lasts until the end of FY13 (Sept. 30).

In addition to sequestration, Congress also is under a March deadline to address the Continuing Resolution (March 27), under which federal agencies are currently funded, and a May deadline to extend the debt ceiling. Failure to address these budget issues could lead to a complete shutdown of the federal government, Albright said.

"March is going to be a big month," he said. "There's a huge amount of uncertainty."

The Laboratory has been exploring "mitigation options" for addressing sequestration, though "no decisions have been made because we're still in a period of extreme uncertainty," Albright said. He said the primary consideration in developing options has been avoiding layoffs, minimizing the impact to employees and their benefits and "providing an ability to rebound when fiscal issues are resolved."

To absorb the cuts sequestration would entail, the current plan would be for Lab employees to take a 10 percent salary reduction with two closure days a month, according to Albright, noting this would still allow employees to accumulate vacation and sick leave at the current rate. The earliest these reductions would go into effect is March 10.

But the salary reductions are not enough and the Lab will institute "draconian" cuts to travel and procurement budgets to help close the gap, he said.

"We just don't know what's going to happen," Albright said. "I could get a phone call tomorrow morning and all this could change."

"I see signs of crisis fatigue in Washington. I know people all over the country are tired of this," he said. "My hope is that once we get through this period, things will stabilize and we can fully focus on the business of what we do."

For more details about sequestration and LLNL contingency plans, see Newsline.

The view from Washington

On a positive note, Albright said the Laboratory's effort to communicate a vision of what it can do for the country has begun to pay off. "We're starting to hear people talk back to us what we've been saying and that's a good thing."

The importance of the work LLNL does for the broader national security mission is increasingly recognized in the departments of defense and homeland security as well as the intelligence community, Albright said.

"There's a lot of momentum on the congressional side to broaden the mission of the national laboratories," Albright said. "We have capabilities that transcend what anybody else has. And we're now a part of the ecosystem of defense, homeland security and intelligence."

S&T highlights and priorities

LLNL is a "leading contender" to work on weapons systems slated for life extension, Albright said, noting WCI is already leading the work to extend the life of the W78.

The Lab also is fleshing out concepts for an interchangeable warhead that could be used on both the Minuteman missile system and submarine-based Trident, he said.

Experimental work in high energy density physics for stockpile stewardship is progressing thanks to research at the National Ignition Facility, Albright said, adding that NIF recently set a record with three shots in a period of 12 hours.

Citing a National Academy of Science report on fusion energy research that called NIF a unique and premier facility for fusion experiments and other technical reviews, Albright said, "There's no reason to believe we can't achieve ignition at NIF."

Turning to high performance computing, he said Sequoia is undergoing final preparations before swinging over to classified stockpile stewardship work and that Vulcan, the smaller version of Sequoia, would provide a resource for industrial collaboration that would help the regional and national economy.

Albright also said planning is in the works for an even more powerful supercomputer in the 150-200 petaflop/s (quadrillion floating operation per second) range that would serve as a bridge to next-generation exascale computing.

In the area of energy, approval in December 2012 by the Public Utilities Commission of the California Energy Systems for the 21st Century (CES-21), under which LLNL will work with utilities to strengthen the state's energy grid, will pave the way for other energy projects, Albright said. "A lot of people are beating a path to our door to talk about how we could help them."

Hagel and Global Zero

Hagel and Global Zero

President Obama’s plan to carry out a new round of nuclear-warhead cuts will be announced soon, U.S. officials say.

The coming round of warhead-reduction talks with Russia was put on hold partly as a result of the Senate delay in confirming Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel, an outspoken proponent of the Global Zero anti-nuclear weapons group that called in a report last year for radical denuclearization steps.

According to one defense official, the president will propose that the United States and Russia initiate talks aimed at reaching a further one-third cut from the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) target level of 1,150 deployed warheads.

Asked about the coming cuts, a White House official told Inside the Ring: “Nothing to announce.” The official then referred to Mr. Obama’s statements in Seoul in March. The president said at the nuclear summit there he thinks the United States can maintain a strong deterrent and “still pursue further reductions in our nuclear arsenal.”
In the months ahead, the president said he would “continue to seek discussions with Russia on a step we have never taken before — reducing not only our strategic nuclear warheads, but also tactical weapons and warheads in reserve.”
The summit was also the site of the now-famous conversation overheard on an open microphone when Mr. Obama told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that, after his re-election, Moscow could expect more flexibility toward Russian demands to limit U.S. missile defenses. Russia has been demanding those limits as a precondition for further warhead cuts.

Rose Gottemoeller, the acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, was in Moscow last week for talks that included discussion of the new arms cuts.


http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/inside-the-ring-835197397/?page=all#pagebreak

Energy official in denial

Energy official in denial

Wow, Podonsky must be suffering from memory loss. The good old days were not as good as he seems to recall. Study after study, panel after panel, report after report, all conclude that there is not much hope to fix NNSA under Energy. Unless Congress is willing to move it to Defense, where it has a legitimate home, the current broken situation will remain, even if it has a modified place on the org chart.

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/doe-official-security-breach-may-necessitate-nuclear-agencys-elimination/

Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

See the DOE lab executive "Piggies" all in a row? This article below about the high salaries of NREL executives pales in comparison to what Directors, PADs, ADs, etc. at labs like SNL, LLNL and LANL make under the hilarious banner of "cost-savings" from privatization implemented by NNSA.

Several years ago the ABQ news reported that SNL's Director was making over $2 million and those executive salaries have only gone up, up, up!

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CO: Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

...Despite record federal debt, municipal bankruptcies and a nagging global recession, those executives enjoy pay packages that are out of reach of most Americans who pay their salaries. MRIGlobal and Alliance tax documents obtained by Watchdog show most earned well into six-figures:

Dan Arvizu, Alliance president and NREL director

2010: $928,069

2009: $691,570

2008: $652,159


Bobi Garrett, NREL senior vice president of Outreach, Planning and Analysis

2010: $524,226.

2009: $398,022


watchdog.org/62420/co-secret-energy-lab
-spawns-million-dollar-govt-employee/

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What's that you say? You only got a 1% raise for the last few years? Follow the money....