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From Editorials, Tri-Valley Herald, Sunday, March 26, 1995
The Lawrence Livermore Lab is trying to come
up with a new answer to a very old workplace question: When is a veteran
employee to be prized because of his experience and accumulated skills,
and when is he merely deadwood--an old-timer who does so little or whose
work has become obsolete and who is holding on to his job because of seniority?
It's a query that crops up in all workplaces, and
one that is going to have to be looked at more closely as industry and government
continue to downsize. In California, it is nowhere more of a problem than
in the schools, where teacher tenure sometimes hurts students. Every parent
can tell a story in which a bright and energetic young teacher has lost
her job to a less qualified veteran because the older teacher had "bumping"
rights. Teacher tenure is an issue about which we're likely to hear more
this year. ?
The Lawrence Livermore Lab, like the schools, has
sheltered its senior employees. Now lab managers what to dump seniority
and handle layoffs on the basis of skills. To survive a layoff, a worker
would have to exhibit "the skills, knowledge and abilities ... necessary
to perform the ongoing or future work" of the lab.
GRADUAL REPLACEMENT
The context at the lab is the gradual replacement
of nuclear weapons research and design by all the other non-Cold War activities
that the lab performs so well. The nuclear work has been the lab's mainstay
during its 43 years of existence.
You might think that using a skills test would
seem reasonable to most fair-minded people, and that all employees, veterans
included, would set out to prove to management that they can still be valuable
to the lab's future. But it doesn't work that way at taxpayer-funded Lawrence
Livermore, where weapons scientists, basking in the warm political glow
created by the needs of the Cold War, had it all their own way for decades
until the Cold War ended five years ago.
OLD-TIMERS FURIOUS
Lab old-timers are not going to descend from the
gravy train voluntarily. They are furious at the lab's proposals. The Society
of Professional Scientists and Engineers promises a fight.
"They (management) use the work 'flexibility'
a lot. What they mean is they'll do what they damn well please as long as
they can get away with it," said Richard White, the society's grievance
chief. White doesn't want management opinions used as the criteria for downsizing.
We understand White's fear that managers will make
decisions arbitrarily. But it seems to us unfounded. The managers' own jobs
depend on making things work efficiently. Surely they are not going to carry
out vendettas or dump a skilled worker if dumping him means that the entire
sector will perform less well.
The lab policy is being finalized, and will be
submitted to lab employees May 1 for their thoughts before anything is adopted.
It looks as though there is a fight ahead.
The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is a major employer
that has cost the taxpayers a lot of money over the years. It did a good
job helping America to fight--and win--the Cold War. But if it is to remain
a vital part of America's future it must look forward, not backward. It
must adapt, as other organizations are learning to do.
That means it must gear its activities to the needs
of the next century, not the one we are leaving. To the extent that seniority
is invoked by cold warriors is hindering that, then seniority must be tampered
with. It is hard to argue with the lab's insistence on skills and relevance,
not just time put in on the job.
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