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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors, not necessarily those of the Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers.
Contents:
Letter to Dr. Jeremy Wu
Diversity
By Chris Hendrickson, LLNL Employee
March 29, 2000
Congratulations on your new job. I hope you are right that you and the organization are taking your position seriously. Mostly I have seen the Ombuds program effectively work with issues involving outright discrimination and sexual harassment. Long term issues are typically ignored. This brings me to my complaint:
Over the years, LLNL has required its employees to attend diversity training of various kinds. The coming stand-down is only the latest. For about 10 years now, I have been pinging at the LLNL Director for his (of course his, not her) lack of consideration of diversity when selecting high-level managers as openings occur. I suspect they are tired of hearing from me. I don't think diversity is best implemented from the grass-roots level alone. To make the kinds of differences I think are important, diversity must be implemented top-down, as well. Management always talks a good game, but ITS implementation seems to be along the lines of employee education, instead of action at the top levels. I know that Affirmative Action is no longer in favor, but I wonder if there is any way the DOE or the UC can force LLNL to select high level management in such a way as to increase the diversity of the LLNL management team.
If you can have an impact on THIS, I'll believe the DOE is serious about diversity. Otherwise, we employees will continue to attend diversity sermons, but will see the same white male faces managing the Laboratory in almost all of its important functions. Hypocrisy is very destructive to morale and to any belief that management is serious about this issue.
Good luck in your new job.
Letter to Dr. Jeremy Wu
By Jeff Colvin, LLNL Employee
March 30, 2000
Once again, thanks so much for coming to LLNL and taking time to meet with employees in the main auditorium. I am the bearded fellow who stood up to direct your attention to what I see as three systemic problems facing the Labs from which all or most of the problems of racial profiling and discrimination stem. Just to summarize what I told you as to what DOE can do to fix these problems:
Ultimately, what I would like to see (I did not mention this point when I spoke to you last Tuesday) is a suitable democratic procedure in place for employees to have input into the selection and retention of the Lab Director. Democratic selection of the Lab Director, I am convinced, would go a long way towards ending cronyism, favoritism, and discrimination at the Labs. Incidentally, I have written to Secretary Richardson on this point (he is an old friend from our days together in New Mexico years ago), but have not gotten a response. Knowing his history, though, I think he would be very sympathetic to my view on this, so I am particularly anxious that something be done to fix these problems while he is still Secretary, because I am afraid that after he is gone from the job the opportunity we have now can be lost forever.
Letter to DOE Ombudsman Jeremy Wu
Racial Profiling
By C. Sue Byars, LLNL Employee
April 3, 2000
Thank you for meeting with LLNL employees. I attended the 1:30
employee meeting on 3/21/00. I appreciated the opportunity to
hear about your new position, and to meet you face-to-face. At
the employee comment section, you challenged us to offer solutions
not just to present problems.
Following are my suggestions on how to end discrimination within the context of employment opportunity and workforce diversity at the National Laboratories. However, I believe that the first issue at hand is Racial Profiling primarily in the context of security and counterintelligence offices. This issue is of a different nature, and not an issue that I have the experiences to address. As a white woman, I have personally experienced gender discrimination and harassment in the workplace, but I have not experienced racial profiling. However, I firmly support the Asian Pacific American community. I believe we have been too engrossed by the fact that the target of this investigation is an American of Chinese ancestry. The real issue is civil rights and the respect of individuals. This issue is one that matters to all Americans.
I am not a member of any of the AADP activity groups that you met with. These groups fall under the Laboratory's Employee Services Association (reference: http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/02employment/workingat.htm). These groups were established as social activity groups and not employee representation groups with management. I only point this out because I suspect that the purpose of these groups was misunderstood by the DOE Racial Profiling Task Force.
I am a member of the Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers (SPSE). SPSE is an organization working towards gaining recognition as a union in a representation election. Information can be found at: www.spse.org.
At the heart of all workplace discrimination concerns is pay equity. The performance appraisal, value ranking, and salary management system at LLNL is unfair and inequitable for women and minorities. Discrimination in the workforce will drastically impact the future success of LLNL and the future economic stability of its workers. I believe that a fair and unbiased review of the statistical analysis will prove that discrimination exists and its extent. However, be cautioned. In the non-traditional jobs for women tokenism is rampant and will skew the numbers. One highly paid woman will overshadow the women at the bottom of the pay scale when the numbers are small. In addition, the movement of one highly paid woman does not mean pay equity.
The solution you mentioned that had been proposed was a new policy. Policies do not change the workplace and they do not change the behavior of management. The only avenue at LLNL that an employee has when policy is violated is to file an administrative review or grievance. This provides another major area of unfairness and inequitableness.
Following are my suggested steps to ending discrimination at LLNL. Recognize there is a problem, identify the depth and width of the problem, and then rectify the problem.
1. Issue a public and private apology to wronged workers. Show respect to the workers who say they have suffered racial and sexual discrimination and harassment while trying to do their jobs. Not all employees have filed lawsuits. Public and private recognition would go a long way to not only preventing future lawsuits but to build trust within the organization.
2. Enforce anti-discrimination laws already on books. Even if LLNL does not have a policy that specifically says it must pay workers fairly and equitably, management should follow the laws of the nation. LLNL needs to follow federal laws put in place to protection workers again discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
3. Cancel performance appraisals, peer ranking, and salary management immediately and perform an audit. Use all 2001 salary money to rectify past problems. Rather than spend the resources used to perform appraisals, ranking, and salary management, use those resources to perform an audit of performance appraisals, ranking, salaries, and job classifications for the past 5 years. Bring in an independent auditor to supervise the audit and the methods used. Ask for input from employees on where the problem spots are, and review the data based on employee opinions of the hot spots.
4. Include short and long term objectives and measure progress in strategic business plans. This would include diversity both at the senior management level and throughout the workforce. Performance appraisals, compensation incentives and other evaluation measures must reflect the line manager's standards and demonstrate progress in pay equity. (It was hot news that Bruce Tarter did not get a pay raise this year imagine the story that could be told if none of the managers got pay raises because they were using discriminatory business practices.)
5. Adopt work/life and family-friendly policies. These accommodate the balance between work and family responsibilities that impact the lifelong career paths of all employees. They will prevent workers who need leave from being tracked into dead-end positions. Whether it is parental leave or sick leave for personal illness, employees should not be harassed when they have a legitimate need to take leave. Family-friendly policies can facilitate all employees' opportunities. This is important in breaking through the LLNL culture barriers.
6. Improve the complaint processing system. The complaint resolution system must be revised to be faster, less expensive, less contentious and provide more productive results in eliminating workplace discrimination. Under the current culture, I personally am unwilling to file a complaint at LLNL without first hiring an attorney or obtaining appropriate legal representation. Unless I want to pay legal expenses, I do not have a complaint resolution system.
Thank you for asking for all employees' comments. I would like to pass on some advice I was once given when I had difficulty determining what steps to take next. The person who gave me the advice claimed it was paraphrased from Mahatma Gandhi.
Apply the First Test
Whenever you are in doubt - apply the First Test
Recall the face of the poorest and weakest woman whom you have
seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be
of any use to her.
Will she gain anything from it?
Will it restore her a control over her own life and destiny?
True development puts first those that society puts last.
Diversity Stand Down
By C. Kalina Wong, LLNL Employee
April 5, 2000
We are getting closer. Efforts have been made in the right direction. We heard you voice our real concerns. The DOE video at the very beginning of the stand down was a very nice introduction to the topic. It would have been nice for the "local" portion to continue deeper in that same vein.
Most of us were very disappointed in the second portion of the stand down. The local DOE office and Lab officials could be doing a lot more and they are not. Management did not provide any commitment to change or assure further action of Richardson's goals and challenges. We were only promised they would study the 5 year old survey, again. The one speaker from outside the LLNL focused on issues irrelevant to diversity. Consequently, very few of us had the opportunity to ask management diversity questions. There was no diversity training everything was glossed over as before.
Part of effective diversity training, especially for non-minorities, is to understand how it feels. Scenarios or examples best describe this. We could hire a few actors and actresses and set up a mock scenario depicting some racial profiling event; ask the audience, "What is wrong with this scene?" and then, show how to handle the situation appropriately. We could depict many other scenarios. Ask us, we can provide examples for you. We could use handicapped, gender, racial, and age issues to demonstrate the problems. We could show how it shows up during ranking and appraisal writing.
We can show how by omission it causes problems. For instance, Richardson talked about filling 2/3 of his positions with different women and people of color - but he never said they were qualified, let alone appropriately qualified. Were they just put into a position to flounder to their demise? If whites are accustomed to ignoring Americans of Asian Pacific descent (for example) as "not having anything important to contribute other than assigned tasks" - how can they succeed? Whites will continue to ignore them. A named title does not necessarily bestow authority. Do we encourage and help minorities adjust when we hire them in?
I believe that largely the whites are not aware of what they do that is discriminatory. They have been taught certain behaviors or actions are not discriminatory (by way of acceptance). Now we need to teach them how and why they are discriminatory; for example, the Director of the Lab is white and male, so, "of course", the next Director should also be white and male. DOE could develop a video of these sorts of examples and distribute it across the complex.
Because we did not go to this extent, many people felt this was a waste of time. They learned nothing new. Whites still don't understand what the problem is. We need to show them the real concern, not dance around it with more hype, more promises that are spineless, more misleading tactics, and more committees.
Richardson declared that discrimination would not be tolerated. What if it is? What are the consequences? We need to replace the existing managers with objective ones using a more representative mix of the workforce population. In particular, we need them in the decision-making capacity with the real ability to affect lab-wide policy.
It was stated that an employee has a right to speak up without retaliation or even the fear of it. We are told, if the employee has a problem, the employee should discuss it with management and seek a resolution agreeable to all. Here, management begins retaliation and the employee is left powerless. Management does not tolerate speaking out against them, even on a 1 on 1 basis. Richardson said he needs the support of each DOE employee, union, and employee representative group to make the DOE a model of the American workforce where everyone has the opportunity to succeed to their fullest potential. What happens when managers fail to protect the rights of employees and instead tolerate the abuses, and even encourage them by way of proliferation?
We feel Richardson is sincere about his goals. But even whistleblowers haven't been given any effective protection with the milquetoast-type enforcement of DOE regulations against retaliation that currently exist and are loudly touted.
We were promised statistics, especially on the laboratory population, but haven't seen anything yet. Management has admitted to having inconsistent data and needing a common database. But they have the one and only official database. What they need is to solicit and provide consistent, honest fields of data. Employees still await employment statistics that could resolve racial bias in promotions and salary.
Tarter announced plans to reaffirm lab diversity goals developed five years ago (what were these goals?). He also talked about plans to release "employment demographics" information to workers. Would these data be applicable to diversity issues of minorities? We also noticed that of all the speakers at the stand down our director was the only one who didn't allow us the opportunity to direct questions to him. Tommy Smith spoke of the very effective Dialogue groups his office has implemented. The problem here is management didn't embrace it and next thing we knew we could not get the four hours a month, lunchtime included, needed to keep this activity viable.
Richardson said racial profiling is real and Americans of Asian Pacific descent were most directly affected. He said top managers must be more actively involved in concerns of employees. LLNL management did not openly admit that there are problems. A law professor from outside the LLNL spoke as if he were a diversion to the real issues of LLNL diversity. Again, management wants to form more committees and more diversity programs. But these "resolutions" have been around for a long time and the problems are still there. This means they don't work. Some oversight must ensure that management recognize the talents in the minority groups and actively promote them. There are many persons of Asian-Pacific decent holding key executive and technical management positions in industry just a few miles away. Why should LLNL be so different? The LLNL presentation mentioned none of this. Lab officials could be doing a lot more and they are not.
Sandia National Laboratory, our neighbor across the street, has a much more proactive management with a higher success rate if only because their communication is a two-way street. They actively solicit employee input, giving the opportunity for all employees to respond, not just a select few.
Trust and equity is the key and they're missing. If DOE and management were truly interested in rebuilding trust and ensuring equity, we would hear about John Deutch (and perhaps others) being held accountable for mishandling classified. We would have ready access to minority demographics and consistent data. We would have managers who are held accountable for not measuring up to human resources management criteria (promote or demote managers on the basis of diversity management, as an equal criterion in their evaluations with meeting program milestones, security, and ESH rules). The LLNL presentations seemed like window-dressing for the problems.
Diversity Stand Down
By Dick Ling, LLNL Employee
April 10, 2000
We had the Diversity Stand down last week. Here are my thoughts:
When the ideas of the Stand down first circulated at the Lab most employees, whites or non-whites felt it was a waste of time and meaningless. However, many of us tried to tell them please keep an open mind and reserve one's judgement until one has gone through the exercise. Unfortunately, the result has reinforced employees' suspicion that this exercise was useless, a show, a window-dressing, a waste of time and nothing would be changed. I now share some of their views.
Nevertheless, the first part of the presentation by DOE was very good and people were very impressed by your speech. You are the only one, ever, by a high-ranking official from DOE who actually mentioned the dreadful words like, glass ceiling, ranking and pay issues. After the Stand down, I had a chance to ask a few coworkers what they thought and they all considered that you are sincere and credible. Unfortunately, that was the only good part of the Stand down and the remaining part done by LLNL was a total disaster. LLNL did put out a lot of superficial efforts to tell employees that the Diversity Stand down is serious, very important and all employees, say 7000 total, have to participate. When the time came, all TVs were turned on and the main auditorium was filled up with employees. Many in the audience were female employees (mostly white) in order to demonstrate "diversity". Tarter's speech was dry and unenthusiastic, Tommy and the guest speaker's speech were upbeat and entertaining, Cochran acted like he was enjoying the party. The guest speaker, a professor from Berkeley was a good speaker. His topic consisted of racial profiling for the certain population that was targeted for police raid; polygraph testing and some reference to security. When he finished he remained at the podium answering employee questions related to his speech thus blocking all the time for the Diversity Stand down. At the end Tarter made a brief dry and unenthusiastic closing remark without leaving the audience with any opportunity to ask questions. There was nothing of substance relating to the diversity issues let alone issues relating to glass ceiling, or ranking, pay or issues specifically included in the Taskforce report. They missed the point by 10,000 miles; the Stand down was suppose to be educational, serious, awakening, self-assessing and action orientated. As you said before, "talk is cheap", If we wanted comedy and some wise remarks we would be better watching Dave Letterman show in the comfort of our homes. Imagine 7000 employees stood/sat at attention to watch the show and feel good for 3 hours each, equivalent to 21,000 man-hours down the drain. Afterwards, employees were left to ask among themselves, why?
My observation is that the Lab upper management really snubbed and showed defiance toward DOE. It appeared that the Lab said, "You wanted a Stand down, you've got one, now leave us alone". I did not recall any follow up action mentioned except both Tommy and Tarter referred more than once to actions that had been taken following the five year old diversity survey. No employees' feedback was solicited at the end. On the contrary, the Lab across the street, Sandia Lab, I don't know how they handled the Stand down but it asked employees' feedback after the Stand down, this was show of commitment and trust. I have asked Tommy if LLNL would do the same and I'm still waiting for his response.
I am at a loss now as to what will be the next step. So the
Lab and many DOE facilities did the Stand down. Does that mean
the whites certainly become born-again non-discriminators or life
goes on? I am concerned that the occasional Stand-downs may be
viewed by LLNL management as a slight inconvenience and as a toothless
tiger. I believe that addressing and dealing with diversity without
responsibility and accountability will definitely turn a good
practice into wide spread discrimination. We have to hold management
accountable for their practices.
I suggest that you obtain a videotape of the Stand down from the
LLNL and see for yourself.
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