June 4, 2008

Open up the Layoff Process and Preserve Academic Freedom

Last week SPSE-UPTE asserted that every laid-off employee has grounds to grieve his or her layoff.  These employees have a number of reasons to file a grievance. The layoff process had irregularities and its outcome may reflect an unlawful bias in the decision making process. Moreover, grievances over the layoff would benefit everyone who remains at LLNL. Chief among these benefits would be exposing the LLNS layoff process to scrutiny, protecting academic freedom, and preserving the right to grieve. 

Employees have only 30 days after the offending event to file a grievance or request an extension.  For those laid off May 22nd or 23rd, this deadline falls on the weekend of June 21st. Since LLNS refuses to release information on the number and composition of many of the business units formed to implement the layoffs, merely gathering the evidence to form a viable case will take longer than 30 days. SPSE-UPTE is painstakingly interviewing the laid-off employees to refine the list of those laid off, and to record the circumstances of individual layoffs. 

In categorically urging every separated employee to challenge his or her layoff, we were responding to the irregularities that surrounded this particular involuntary separation.  The most obvious of these irregularities was the large fraction of the Lab's workforce that was excluded. We also noted that some organizations subdivided their employees into so many layoff units that seniority played little if any role in determining the order of layoff for the non-200 series employees within a given job code.  Manipulating layoff units to circumvent seniority would be a violation of policy and the law. We are also looking carefully at the possibility of age discrimination in the choices that LLNS made.

In pursuing grievances, laid-off employees stand to learn much more than LLNS has volunteered to date about the layoff process, particularly if the grievances proceed to arbitration. With information such as the composition of business units, everyone can better assess how consistently and properly the layoff was carried out.

Bringing public scrutiny to LLNS' layoff procedures would discourage their removing someone who chooses to disagree with a dominant or politically expedient view and is therefore branded as a maverick and not a "team player." Management by UC had its faults, but academic freedom and transparency were valued.  SPSE-UPTE is determined to preserve these values, even in a private sector limited liability company.

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