UC pension in serious trouble!

Anonymously contributed:

While we in LANS/LLNS are grumbling about the shortfall of funding in TCP-1 be aware that the UC retirement system is in serious trouble.


http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/23973

The following excerpt:

With the university facing rising costs for pension and retiree health benefits, Yudof formed the task force in February 2009 and charged it with developing recommendations for competitive pension and retiree health benefits that would be financially sustainable over the long term. The university already has a $21 billion unfunded liability for its retiree health and pension benefits. Within five years, that unfunded liability is projected to grow to $40 billion — twice the current size of the entire UC budget."

Have you lost ground?

Anonymously contributed:

Raises soon, and are the health insurance rates going to go up? How many have received a raise and lost take home because of the increased costs? I've lost ground for two years.

Debt, deficit and defense

You can blame anything you want for the decadence of the NNSA Labs but you cannot ignore the impact of war costs! That is the real killer. Scroll to page 4 of this file:


http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1006SDTFreport.pdf

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Americans using less energy -

Something to cheer about!

http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2010/08/23/daily19.html

LANS @ LANL Where is the money?

LANS @ LANL Where is the money?

Found out today that their will be hardly any monies for M&S spending in FY11. The overhead tax rate on programs went up another 9% to cover the Pension shortfall and higher medical premiums.

Will not hurt Mikey and others in power as they get a nice salary from the Lab payroll and then another few hundred thousand from their parent companies such as LLNL and Bechtel. Plus a nice PBI Bonus. Oh and don't forget the Executive Pension and Medical Plans and other perks.

Its all smoke and mirrors folks. The outsourcing of the Labs has been a dismal failure. Management is covering it up with skewed metrics and falsifying audit reports. I am surprised that any science gets done at all.

Whats up at LLNL?

Any advice on knowing when to quit LLNL?

Anonymously contributed:
Any advice on knowing when to quit LLNL? Particularly for postdocs/flexterms, how do you decide it's time to move on to someplace where it might be easier to do science with less restrictions? Will my boss even care? How much notice do I have to give? Any horror stories?

How is the lack of space charges working out for you?

Anonymously contributed:
How is the lack of space charges working out for you?

Space hoarding?

Forced moves of technical staff from Q areas in nice buildings to open area offices in ratty buildings? Moves of non-technical staff into nice Q buildings that they have no need to occupy?

Zero available lab space for new projects?