![[Maturity Curves]](maturity.gif)
SPSE Newsletter #3, October 1996
Editor: G. Craig
P.O. Box 1066, Livermore, CA 94551
510-449-4846
In his latest Lab wide address, Director
Tarter indicated that 400 employees were taking the Voluntary
Retirement Incentive Program (VSIP). Stating that his target is
to cut 600 jobs this year, he reiterated the possibility of involuntary
reductions next January unless his ADs can "stimulate"
more interest in VSIP. He stressed that these cuts are not due
to the Lab budget which is "pretty good." The budget
for FY97 is currently pegged at $1.057 billion which will give
us slightly more spending power than last year. The Director added
that he "chooses" to use this money "to build and
buy " at the expense of base-building salary raises.
Early in 1996, management changed the layoff policy for 200 series employees, eliminating their seniority and rehire rights. All of you who are upset and want to fight, here's your chance.
SPSE is planning legal action to have the old layoff policy reinstated and we welcome support from one and all. Individuals in the 200 and 300 series can help by joining SPSE.
If we don't stand up for our rights,
we are bound to lose them. This year they took away seniority,
next year it might be the retirement pension program.
Why is it that certain problems in LLNL keep popping up again and again, year after year, like very hardy perennials? Is it because the employees cannot agree on what they want, what they need to get their work done, and what they consider equitable? This question motivated me to volunteer for a Diversity Action Team (DAT) last fall.
This is a personal report on my experiences. For those who like to compare perspectives, the official reports are available on the Grapevine at http://www.llnl.gov/llnl_only/dat-reports and an official summary of them was published in the June 11, 1996, Newsline.
Fanfare and Kick-off
The action opened with an optimistic
article in the October 31, 1995, Newsline describing the
four DAT teams: Empowerment, Performance Evaluation, Opportunity,
and Career Development. This was followed by the kickoff meeting
with speakers for all four teams.
Actually there was another team-a Steering Committee, composed of managers, Public Affairs, and Human Resources experts. They picked members for the action teams, and acted as co-chairs for the teams.
We were picked from volunteers, with a ratio of about 3 to 1 of those who volunteered to those selected. We were an impeccably diverse group. Not only were there diverse racial and ethnic groups represented, but also diverse directorates, occupations, and genders, all distributed evenly throughout the four teams.
The Garden Path
The Steering Committee not only assembled
our teams but continued to guide our work until December 1995.
Each team was asked to produce a report on its area, which would
pinpoint the problems, identify their root causes, suggest solutions,
and discuss pros and cons.
We were told that the four reports would be published by Steering Committee, then transmitted to the Senior Management Council and eventually to the Director's Office where all recommendations would be seriously considered for implementation.
Before we began our work, LLNL Human Resources professionals gave us an intensive course on conflict resolution terminology, practices, and procedures. We learned that the Staff Relations Division, which handles grievances, also represents the University in dealing with unions and legal disputes with employees. In contrast, the Employee Relations group, which runs the Ombuds Program and counseling services, is supposed to be impartial. We also heard about innovative companies, like Xerox and Levi-Strauss, who have successfully applied peer review and 360-degree appraisal techniques. All the resources of the Lab and even the outside consultants were made available to us.
Our first assignment was to analyze the write-in comments from the Diversity Survey which the consultants conducted during 1995. The survey results are posted on the Grapevine and several volumes of write-in comments are available in the main TID library.
As I began, I was struck by the large number of negative comments about the Conflict Resolution process. Like most employees, I knew little about the darker aspects of Human Resources work and, like most employees, I had not differentiated between the Staff Relations Division and the Employee Relations group. I joined the working group on Conflict Resolution practices.
Conflict Resolution
As I analyzed the write-in comments on
Conflict Resolution services, of which 50 to 70% were negative,
often extremely negative, it became clear to me that at least
some of the bad experiences my colleagues had were due to misunderstandings.
For example, one person was surprised when his complaints were written down and later used against him in grievance hearings. He was unaware that a grievance hearing is an adversarial proceeding, similar to a court hearing, with witnesses and transcripts. It was as if, stumbling into the wrong office, he had presented his complaints and evidence to the opposing attorney. No wonder people who had such an experience felt cheated. This could have been avoided if proper information were more widely and easily available.
In summary, our working group's final report recommended:
We did not consider our recommendations radical or unique. Conflict Resolution which includes some form of the peer review is practiced by many innovative companies including some in the high technology industry. It seemed reasonable to us that the employees of the University of California could handle that much responsibility.
The "Telephone Game" Begins
Like the children's game "Telephone,"
our recommendations morphed each time they were reviewed. The
perspectives and preconceptions of the listeners played their
role, as always, in the distortions that resulted.
First, the entire Empowerment committee read and discussed our recommendations. There was immediate consensus that the Ombuds Program should be expanded to all directorates. Other recommendations were revised until there were no objections from the group.
As the contributions of the various working groups were being fused, so much supporting material suddenly appeared that the Empowerment Committee report swelled to an unwieldy eighty pages. That report was not published. It is available on request from the Affirmative Action office. A professionally written summary was published instead. The original report was neither accepted or rejected. It was simply rewritten for brevity and used when the Steering Committee consolidated it with the other team reports. The Steering Committee report was then given to the director and was summarized in Newsline.
To trace one example in this game: Since grievances and reviews are appeals to the Director, it is the Director's prerogative to appoint the panel from which the Hearing Officers are chosen. The working group on Conflict Resolution recommended that the Director modify the process to reflect employee values and making it more credible.
Our recommendation was to pick some of the Hearing Officers by an "employee choice method" patterned on the jury system. Selection could be made at random either from the volunteers who completed the training on procedures or from ombuds from a different division than that of the employee asking for the hearing. We felt we made it quite clear that this procedure would be quite different from having management hand-pick a few non-managers for the panel.
The Newsline article implies that we recommended that the current selection process be kept and simply change the composition of the panel to include non-managers.
What's the Difference?
Perhaps an analogy can illustrate the
problem. In the old Soviet Union they used to have empowerment
campaigns on a regular basis. There were whole institutes devoted
to studying the problem of making industry more efficient. Naturally,
removing the Party's power to micro-manage each company was not
considered.
The courts in the Soviet Union also had juries of sorts, except that the jurors were appointed-appointed, of course, by the Party. When the workers grumbled about fairness, the Party tried all kinds of different formulae for composition: they tweaked the gender ratio, ethnicity balance.... The workers stubbornly continued to see the system as biased and unchanged.
Are there some lessons here? Granted that the workplace is not a democracy, consider the following hypothetical case: If a manager had 10 complaints logged against him, and a panel of employees reviewed the facts and concluded that he was in error in 8 out of 10 instances, as defined by University rules and regulations, would that be such a bad thing for the Director to know?
At the End of the Game
After waiting a half year for the release
of the Diversity Action Team reports, it is disappointing to find
that our recommendations did not get through. How is senior management
to make decisions using employee input if this input was not understood
or conveyed?
How can we avoid having the same problems pop up year after year even after employees have put their best efforts toward recommending changes to solve them? Watching the conclusion of the game, I feel I now have an answer to my question. Good communication must go both ways, up the hierarchy as well as down. It requires a willingness to address in a timely manner all recommendations rather than selecting only those which one wants to hear. It requires the ability to speak and to listen, and sometimes we must repeat what we have said.
At the end of the "Telephone" game there is a check: the child who began restates his word or phase. Newsline has no 'Letters to the Editor.' It is a one-way medium. Employees have to find other ways to be heard. What was Accomplished?
It appears that the Employee Relations group is preparing the web pages for the Grapevine which will describe the Conflict Resolution process. That is a hopeful sign but so far it is the only recommendation being acted on. Until it happens, employees can consult "The Real Earth Employee Handbook" compiled by SPSE at http://www.spse.org/REE_Handbook.html. It is not up-to-date, it is not official, but it still has good advice.
Conclusions
One of the most frequent write-in comments
of the Diversity Survey, following the gripes about the unfair
Conflict Resolution process, was "Management has to walk
the talk."
Time to walk! The nineties are a more
skeptical, even cynical era, as the emergence and popularity of
the Dilbert cartoon indicates. Today, employees are not easily
taken in by virtual empowerment. It has to be real. /Peter Mikes
A delegation of SPSE members met with officials of the Staff Relations Division of the Human Resources Department on the July 30, 1996. We requested this meeting in order to ask a variety of questions related to the ongoing workforce restructuring and VSIP activities. Below is a summary of our discussions.
Please note: Since SPSE is not the exclusive representative of Lab scientists and engineers, the statements made by management representatives may not be binding on the Laboratory. So, supply your own salt.
Q. Does the June 17 address by Bruce Tarter constitute the official 120 day notice of a layoff?
A. Yes, by virtue of Section 3161 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1993.
Q. Why didn't Bruce Tarter tell us that the announced restructuring plan (RP) was a draft?
A. No direct answer.
Q. Has DOE Secretary O'Leary approved the RP, and if so may we have a copy of what she has signed.
A. No. Typically, the Secretary's approval occurs 60 days after the announcement.
As of today (120 days), the DOE Oakland Operations Office has not yet submitted the plan to the Secretary.
Q. Is LLNL now operating under the UC Human Resources Management Initiative (HRMI)?
A. No. According to Robert Perko, of Staff Relations, we here at LLNL have never operated under UC Personnel Policies.
Q. Why is there no "preferential rehire" in our RP, when it is a part of both DOE's 3161 and UC's HRMI?
A. The Lab is discussing what DOE means by preferential rehire. It is in debate with DOE.
This last point appears to have been the major issue in DOE's delay of approval.
Q. It is a fact that individuals are being "designated" and they are told so. This has happened in Physics and other organizations, and contrary to LLNL's claims to both DOE and the public that only job categories are designated. Is this practice intentional and are you investigating instances of people being warned or frightened into taking VSIP?
A. We disagree that specific people have been designated, only job classes. If this has occurred, we do not approve.
Q. Are there "designated" management categories? Will this RP reduce the number of management levels or the number of individual managers?
A. The RP has to do with a restructuring of the workforce because we see an imbalance in our present "skills mix." The plan does not explicitly address management as a structure, or target any manager/employee ratios. Managers as individuals can participate in VSIP.
The ratio of support staff (3000) to scientists (4000) is approximately 0.75. The ratio of to managers-supervisors (800) to employees (7000) is approximately 0.11.
Q. What proportion of designated population is comprised of EBAs? Also what proportion is over 50?
A. Demographics are unknowable until a layoff.
Q. Why have a seniority preference for VSIP as a tie-breaker? Why are seniority and age seen as being of low value?
A. We see this as a reward for senior employees.
Q. How did you arrive at the SKAs/job categories to be dropped ("designated")? Why were employees not involved in this process as was done in Computations after the loss of NERSC where there was extensive interviewing of employees about the SKAs needed for future work?
A. There is a global aspect to the process. Bruce Tarter reviewed each directorate.
Q. Are people in a job category with "0" designations protected from a layoff in this 3161 cycle?
A. Unequivocally "Yes." If things change drastically we will file a new 3161.
Q. How did you arrive at the "caps," as a total, and as a distribution among job categories? Why have caps at all in job categories with "0" designations? Why pay desirable workers to leave?
A. The ADs decided what loss they could sustain.
Q. Are the present RP and VSIP templates for future layoffs?
A. We would probably do the same thing. We do not plan to do this often, if again.
Q. What is the LLNL vision of its future workforce? Will managers be career employees, and staff be term employees? We see career technical employees targeted for reduction, and term employment with technical outsourcing slated for growth.
A. We are concerned about keeping career people. We definitely want to keep career staff. We do not want to just have temps, terms, post-docs, etc.
Q. What is the brokering plan, if any, to channel career employees into current jobs and tasks declared necessary by the fact of being posted as "term jobs." If these tasks and the money to do them exist, why not seek out "designated," "EBA," or other underutilized career employees for them?
A. Each Directorate has a broker.
This response is weak. The brokering process was described,
in similar terms as in a recent Newsline article. We see this
process as too little and too slow. The major bottle-neck here
is no doubt due to the usual interdepartmental wrangling over
money and resources, rather than in the performance of the HR
department as a broker. Refugees are not welcome in a recession.
/Manuel Garcia
In the Spring of '95, Lab management proposed changing the layoff policy to replace seniority with SKAs as the prime determinant of the order of layoff. At that time, management held several highly publicized meetings with employees in the main auditorium and elsewhere to clarify the goals and workings of the new layoff policy, and to receive employee input.
During those meetings, Gloria Kwei, AD for Human Resources, unequivocally stated that as the information about SKAs developed, not just as part of a layoff process, but as part of management's continuous responsibility to shepherd Lab resources, it would share the information with the rank and file.
The recent filing of the 3161 with DOE by Lab management is the first step in a layoff process. Make no mistake, the "designated" numbers in each of the directorates are the only classifications in which layoffs can occur, if reduction targets are not met.
During our meet and discuss with Robert Perko, we asked when the Lab would share the SKA analysis information that led to the VSIP "designated" numbers. His response was that the information is too immature to yet share with employees; the Cost Cutting Initiative and the Strategic Planning Committee are not ready for prime time. Perko was immediately challenged-if the information is not mature enough to share with employees, how can it be mature enough to base decisions about restructuring LLNL's workforce, i.e., to designate who should stay and who should go? He had no response.
Lab employees should recognize that, in this first test of management's ability to deal plainly and fairly with the question of laying off employees based on their SKAs, it appears that management hasn't got a clue how to read entrails, crystal balls, or any other fortune telling device. It's guessing about which skills the Lab can and cannot afford to sacrifice. Worse, it appears that many of the employees who will walk out with loads of loot are, in fact, highly desirable employees likely to be replaced soon with new hires.
In short, VSIP is proving a fiasco,
and its conduct should be very disturbing to anyone who hoped
to gain insights about which skills, knowledge, and abilities
will afford them the best protection against future RIFs. /Dave
Lappa
The curves above show salary distributions
for LLNL's 200 series job-class scientists and engineers as a
function of years since bachelor's degree. The data is for fiscal
year 1996. The 20th, 50th, and 80th percentiles are plotted. The
smooth curves are fits of 3rd degree polynomials to the noisy
raw data (jagged lines). We will publish the FY97 curves when
the data becomes available. (These curves were revised on November
11, 1996. The PhD curves initially published incorrectly began
at one year since BS.)
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