An open letter to Dr. Chu

Anonymously contributed:

Dear Dr. Chu,

Welcome to LLNL. Look closely. Too bad it isn't what you expected.

Ask George why he thinks costs are going up only 4%,when his pricing tools show 10%.

Ask him if Russo and Liedle serve him as well as Kuckuck and Mara served Anastasio.

Ask his why he degraded engineering from two strong independent departments to a single weak job-shop.

Ask him why his people are so demoralized.

Ask him why he put a 150% tax on travel costs.

Ask him what DoE get from Bechtel for $40M per year? Where is the new accounting system, where is the promised project management system?

Ask him why he lies to his employees so regularly.

Ask him why the Bechtel business operations folks make declarations without bothering to leave their offices to see how things work.

Ask him how he can retroactively bill sponsors for rate increases for work that was contracted for at a lower rate?

Ask him why he hasn't aplogized publically for the "substantially equivalent in the aggregate" lie.

Ask him why employees who know him think that he is a self-absorbed blow hard.

Ask him to resign.

Thank you,

Technical staff

Dr Chu's Visit

I expected B123 to be overflowing! I expected dozens of questions!
I expected the contributors of the "open letter to Dr Chu"s to be there to ask the
questions, didn't you?

What happened to callbacks?

I was laid off due to the ISP. Unable to find work I have taken another job at LLNL at half my old pay. To my shock my old departments org chart is as big as it was before the ISP. LLNS has filled all the laid off workers positions with matrixed engineering people. I have the proof! How can they do that? What happened to callbacks? Is anyone looking into this? Does DOE provide any oversight for LLNS and if so who can be contacted?

Eroding benefits!

Anonymously contributed:

Hey, how about those new medical plan premiums? I'm a UC retiree forced to have my medical benefits provided by LLNS, and my premium is going up almost 50% next year (and benefits are being reduced). Add to this the fact that UC retirees from "other campuses" continue to enjoy the same benefits that they always received from UC (way, way better than ours), while we Lab types bite the big one again. I know some retirees are organizing and perhaps planning to sue, but I'm afraid that won't pan out, or at least it won't be resolved any time soon. It's a travesty, I tell you. We, who put in all those years in support of the Lab, the University, and the COUNTRY, we who were instrumental in the country's defense and helped win the Cold War, are being sold down the river by DOE, NNSA, UC, and the Bechtelians. Legal or not, it just isn't right, and it smacks of discrimination to me. George (and the rest of you ULM Bechtelian suck-ups who used to be our colleagues), you ought to be ashamed of yourself (I would expect this kind of treatment from the Bechtelians carpet-baggers, but not from you). Don't you have any shred of self respect anymore? Or do you just continue to rationalize that you are "doing the best you can," or that you "are just making the best of a bad situation", or "well, somebody has to do it and I'm going to make sure that I make out OK." As a long-time Lab employee who gave the best years of my life to the place, I'm embarrassed for you and for the institution of which I was once proud to be a part.

Firings in NIF

Anonymously contributed:

No pun intended! There were some people fired at NIF for mismanagement. Finally,
someone had the courage to clean house. If this is done on a larger scale, in other directorates, some managers will have an incentive to rise above mediocrity!
The good old boys culture (scratch my back and I will scratch yours) is beginning to crumble!

About George's talk today

Anonymous contribution (edited):

Two things came out of G.M.'s all hands today that were pretty significant. One is that UC will be asking LLNL employees to contribute to the UC retirement fund to help cover lab retiree annuities. The other is that DOE/NNSA is thinking about raiding the LLNS defined benefit fund to help solve underfunded defined benefit plans of other national labs.

Budget shortfall

Anonymously contributed:

Last week GM revealed that the Lab's operating budget for FY10 is expected to be $100M or so less than FY09. Not only is this bad for the real programs, but it means the indirect (overhead) budget will be less also, since there is less money to tax.

Since GM has promised to avoid a layoff this year, does this mean (1) IAP and flex term employees need to update their resumes, (2) buyouts look possible, (3) NIF will have to pull its own weight, or (4) CFO can follow the Obama example and spend more than it collects?