SPSE Newsletter #3, May 1995
Editor: Jim Bruner
P.O. Box 1066, Livermore, CA 94551
510-449-4846

Contents:

• S&E Senate
• Misconceptions About Layoff Policies
• Lab Must Revisit Term Policies
• Open Letter to Secretary O'Leary
• Term Appointees: 2nd Class Employees?
• Letter to the Editor: S&E's Move to Bottom of Ladder
• Seniority Distribution (Graph) for LLNL Scientists and Engineers

SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS SENATE

Authorization Drive Continues

     Support for a Scientists and Engineers (S&E) Senate that will give the S&E staff a democratic voice in setting LLNL policies continues to grow. We already have one-quarter of the authorizations needed to call an election. If we are successful in getting and then winning an election, SPSE will set up a scientists and engineers senate similar to the academic senates on the various UC campuses. The S&E Senate will debate policy matters and use the force of California law to require management to negotiate any policy changes with the staff.

     To have an election, 30% of the S&E staff must sign authorization cards. An authorization card is included in the centerfold of this Newsletter. Sign and return your card promptly. If you have already signed, persuade a friend or colleague to sign. The introduction of democracy into our workplace is the one sure way by which we can make LLNL's administration accountable to the employees. ~

Misconceptions About Layoff Policies

     The March 26 Tri-Valley Herald newspaper carried an editorial supporting LLNL Director Tarter's proposal to change the order of layoff policy for scientists and engineers. The Herald published a response from SPSE's Grievance Committee chair, Richard White on April 3. The response, reproduced here, use it addresses several common misconceptions about the present layoff policy and the proposed new policy.

To the Editor, Tri-Valley Herald

     Your March 26 editorial "Is seniority getting old?" is founded on three misconceptions.

     Misconception 1: You presume that layoffs are a tool used to maintain staff competence. Specialists in personnel management disagree with you. Helga Christopherson, as Special Assistant to the LLNL Director (and former head of LLNL's Human Resources Dept.) briefed the Director's Work Force Policy Planning Task Force on exactly this issue. She said, "The law makes clear the differences between performance management and layoffs. It presumes that performance management is handled continuously, not just during times of layoff. Therefore, the basic presumption of layoffs is that no one's performance is poor enough to remove them from service or else termination would already have occurred through the performance management system."

     LLNL employees can be and are fired for poor work performance. SPSE advocates a strong performance management system with both positive and negative incentives. To the extent that we are burdened by non-performers, Lab management has not done its job.

     Misconception 2: You incorrectly imply that the Lab's current order of layoff is by inverse seniority. Facts: The order of layoff applies only within a group of employees who are designated as a layoff unit by the Director. Then, the order of layoff, within the designated unit, is by inverse seniority except that persons with skills, knowledge, and abilities needed for ongoing programs may be retained.

     This policy has an underlying objective basis for selection and yet permits retention of essential personnel. It makes management accountable. Exceptions to the underlying objective standard must be demonstrably based on skills. The Director proposes to replace this policy with one that has no objective basis. No significant management accountability would be required.

     Misconception 3: You repeatedly imply that the Lab is heavy with "deadwood" "old-timers" whose skills are no longer needed. We need not even address the skills issue to show the error in this thinking. There are not enough "old timers" around to fuel a layoff. Of 2960 career scientists and engineers at LLNL, only 141 (5%) have 30 years or more service. Fifty-eight of these veterans are management personnel who would be essentially bullet-proof under either the old or the proposed new layoff policy. By contrast, 21% of Lab scientists and engineers have been here 5 to 10 years and 26% have been at the Lab for less than 5 years.

     It is not Lab veterans who will bear the brunt of the Director's proposed layoff policy; it is the much larger number of scientists and engineers with less than ten years service. The policy would change the Laboratory from an institution possessing a seasoned staff with significant skills and expertise into a job shop staffed by narrowly focused scientific temporaries.

     Temporary staffing may be cost-effective for businesses that focus on short-term projects and quick investment returns. This mode of research and development is best left to private enterprise. A national laboratory must keep an expert research staff and well-trained technicians to take on projects whose scope, risk, and lack of immediate return make them unattractive to private investment. The required levels of experience, expertise, and dedication will not be provided by a staff of scientific temporaries.

     It is not to save the jobs of a few old fuddy-duddies that SPSE strongly opposes the Director's proposed layoff policy. We want to preserve and develop the strength of our staff; the life of our institution depends upon it, and all Lab jobs, as well as many other jobs within the Tri-Valley community, depend upon the life of the institution. ~

Lab Must Revisit Term Policies

     Last June, LLNL Director Tarter approved changes in the Lab's term appointment policy. These changes increased term appointment limits to 5 years, removed requirements that an appointment could be extended only once for a maximum of 1 year, and applied the policy to all job classes instead of just 200 series jobs.

State Law Violated
     Tarter approved these changes without seeking any employee input. State law requires that employee input be considered before adopting policy changes.

     LLNL did not reveal the new policy to employees until months after its adoption. SPSE learned of the changes in August. We immediately requested a "meet and confer" with Lab management.

     In the meet and confer, LLNL's representatives said that the policy changes did not affect persons already employed and that, therefore, they did not solicit employee comment. SPSE responded that the new policy shut off job openings for unassigned career employees. (With few exceptions, career employees cannot apply for term positions unless they agree to forfeit their career status.) We produced data showing dramatic increases in term jobs following adoption of the policy change, and corresponding decreases in career jobs listed in the job opportunities bulletin.

LLNL Refuses to Comply With Law
     Though LLNL conceded our point that the change did affect Lab employees, they refused to reopen the policy for employee comment. SPSE's attorney then wrote the UC Counsel, threatening action unless the changes were reconsidered and employee comments were solicited. LLNL's Counsel responded, saying that they would not seek employee comment, that the administration could make whatever changes they wanted, and that there was nothing employees could do about it.

Unfair Practice Charge Filed
     SPSE President Bruce Kelly and Board members Manuel Garcia and George Craig filed an unfair practice charge. The state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) reviewed the case and issued a complaint citing failure to give prior notice to employees.

     PERB held a settlement hearing in April at its San Francisco office. In the settlement, LLNL agreed to revisit the policy and solicit employee comments. Employees now have until May 31 to address comments to Human Resources Manager Gloria Kwei. (See LLNL Newsline, Friday, May 5, 1995.)

Let Your Voice be Heard
     We urge employees to write to Kwei at L-727 and to send copies of their letters to the UC Assistant Vice-President for Employee Relations, (Ms.) Lubbe Levin, 300 Lakeside Dr., 9th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612-3550. It is appropriate to comment on the failure to conduct a proper review of the policy changes as well as on features of the policy itself.

     The article "Term Appointees: 2nd Class Employees?" (p. 3) gives more information about term appointments. Copies of the old and new policies are available from the SPSE office: (510) 449-4846. ~

Open Letter To Secretary O'leary

     On April 9, SPSE President Bruce Kelly sent the following letter to DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Enclosed with the letter were copies of the March 26 Tri-Valley Herald Editorial and the SPSE response that is printed on page 1 of this Newsletter.

Dear Secretary O'Leary:

     The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director is proposing a policy that we seek your assistance in defeating. He is planning to alter the Laboratory layoff policy as applied to career scientists and engineers. This change is in response to funding uncertainties originating from congressional debate over the future of federally funded R&D. The current layoff policy has been in existence for 21 years and is based on seniority with exceptions for needed skills, knowledge and abilities. The new policy ignores seniority and will allow layoff of career professionals at management's discretion. Our reasons for opposing the new policy follow.

     The exception provisions of the current layoff policy provide ample flexibility for managing professional staffing requirements while preserving managerial accountability to the professional employees. The new policy of providing for staff layoff at manage- ment's discretion will encourage the replacement of career professionals with non-career, scientific temporary workers such as graduate students, post docs, and outside consultants. Such temporary workers are not only easily exploited with low wages and little job security but also have no vested Laboratory interests and are unable to provide the corporate scientific infrastructure that makes our Laboratory vibrant and vital.

     A dedicated career professional staff is crucial to the scientific integrity of LLNL as a research institution and to the continuity of new program evolution. The career investment of dedicated staff personnel provides the character and coherence of our professional infrastructure and is the essence of LLNL's world-class scientific establishment. By subjecting them to arbitrary layoff, the new layoff policy ignores career investment and demoralizes the professional staff. It also will weaken the relationship between LLNL and the surrounding community by undermining the long-standing commitment of employees' families to the lab.

     Further, the new layoff policy invites supervisory abuse by allowing managers to dismiss employees without due process. The new layoff policy obstructs the principles of Total Quality Management by empowering the Senior Management Council rather than the employees.

     We, as professional scientists and engineers at LLNL, adamantly oppose the new layoff policy and respectfully request that you express your disapproval of it to our director, Bruce Tarter, and to the LLNL employees. We also would like to meet with you or your representative to discuss our concerns regarding the detrimental impact of this policy on current and future generations of scientific talent in this country. ~

Term Appointees: 2nd Class Employees?

     LLNL has several classes of employees. Most of us are "career employees." This is the usual mode of hiring on all UC campuses, including LLNL. Career employees can be fired only for unsatisfactory performance or misconduct. If layoffs occur, we presently have some job security pursuant to the order-of-layoff policy. (The Director is trying to change this.)

Term Appointments Fill Special Needs
     UC created term appointments because short-term jobs may arise for which no career employee is qualified. Such jobs are supposed to accomplish well-defined tasks within a predictable time. In these situations, the term-appointment policy permits hiring persons with special skills for a set term.

     Term employees have many of the privileges of career employees; e.g., health benefits. They must participate in the retirement system even though it is unlikely they will ever become vested in that system. (Vestment occurs after 5 years of UC service.)

Term Positions Not Convertible to Career Status
     A term appointment ends at its expiration; it can't be extended beyond the limit: now 5 years, formerly 3 years. Before expiration of the appointment, a term employee may be terminated with 30 days' notice. At the end of his/her term, a term appointee's status is the same as for other persons applying for a job from outside the Lab. Term appointments are not routinely convertible into career positions.

Violations and Abuses
     Recently, LLNL has used term appointments as an extended form of probation for new hires. Several term appointees complain that they were told term appointments are the normal route to career jobs at LLNL. Others tell us that their job duties changed from those specified in their offer letter. (This violates both the spirit and the letter of the term policies.)

     In the late 1970s, a flock of similar abuses of the term policies occurred. SPSE took these before UC's Staff Relations Board (SRB), a committee (now disbanded) that reviewed and recommended policy implementations to UC's president.

     We took three cases to the SRB. The term appointees had made heavy personal commitments (selling and buying homes, moving families, etc.) based on a belief that employment would continue if performance was satisfactory. They were led to believe that term employment is the usual route to career status. Two were terminated on short notice. These were not cases of persons being hopeful and over-optimistic. They were misled by oral and written statements.

SRB Cracks Down on Lab
     SPSE's position was that if the Laboratory needed to hire persons under an extended probation, they should be candid about it. Then, job applicants would not be misled about prospects for continued employment.

     The SRB required LLNL to rewrite their implementation of UC's policy to clarify the nature and purpose of term appointments and to require that offer letters clearly spell out the conditions of term employment. This effectively deterred abuse until recently when Lab management extended the term limit to 5 years and began to ignore policy requirements. (See article: "Lab Must Revist Term Policies," page 2.)~

Letters to the Editor:

S&E's Move to Bottom of Ladder
     Editor: The Lab seems to realize its future depends on the productivity and creativity of its scientists more so than any other group. For this reason we have been singled out as the group that can be replaced most easily. From one viewpoint this may make sense.

     However, there is another viewpoint to consider: When I joined LLNL in 1961 the senior scientists were viewed as the focus of leadership, etc., and management was viewed as a support/enabling function to assist them. At that time LLNL was probably the most exciting place in the country to carry out research, and we were highly productive. Over the years, this has reversed. It is a subtle attitude change, but very real. Scientists are now clearly a support function to management, and overhead in general. It is certainly reflected in salaries. Along with this change, there has been the imposition of a massive number of regulations under the guise of improving safety. This, of course, more than doubled the number of personnel at LLNL with over half of them now controlling how and when a scientist can do his/her job (collecting over half the money paid to LLNL for the job). And, most of these controllers are starting to have higher salaries than the scientists. Thus, they also have been elevated above the scientists. A few months ago I wanted to run an experiment measuring outside evaporation rate vs. vapor pressure to help predict the potential hazard of a liquid chemical spill. To do this I simply wanted to heat water outside over a camp stove. It took more than two weeks to get all the permits to carry out the experiment. A friend of mine wanted to measure the rate of permeation of solvents through polyethylene containers. It took six months for him to get all his permits. Another friend of mine wanted to set up a dye laser (using alcohol). It took nine months for him to get all his permits. I suspect LLNL scientists now have to overcome more artificial regulatory obstacles and carry more people on overhead than any other place in the country. We have come full circle, from the most exciting place in the country to perform scientific research to the most hostile environment in the country for scientific research.

     Management has come to recognize that we have a critical productivity problem that will have to be addressed if we want to survive. What is their answer: Whip the scientists harder by reducing their job security below any other group at LLNL. We have now been placed at the absolute bottom of the ladder. This looks more like a panic response than a visionary one. I am afraid this reflects an attitude that will be fatal to LLNL. The image that comes to me is an overhead mass at LLNL that is a cancer in the final stages of killing its host. The finalization of the new layoff policy will further accelerate the disease. /David Gregg ~