SPSE Newsletter #3, October 1997
Editor: G. Craig
P.O. Box 1066, Livermore, CA 94551
510-449-4846
It's getting to be that time of year when questions and misconceptions about raises are flying rampant. For example, in the last cycle of salary raises at LLNL, the local press reported that top administrators got a 4.5% raise and the Scientists and Engineers a 4.1% raise. This hardly seemed to support the mantra that executive compensation was growing while that for workers was falling behind.
We decided to do a little financial analysis on Lab salaries and raises to see how they are administered within the professional scientific, engineering and technical staff.
The Analysis
We began with Lab salary listings for Oct. 94, Oct. 95, Oct. 96, and Aug. 97. Each of these lists was processed in the manner described below and the results are plotted in the accompanying figures.
First, we cut each list down to the Director (job classification 170) and those 200 and 300 job classification employees who were paid monthly. All other employees were removed from the data base. We then sorted each list by salary.
We recorded the top salary for each year (i.e. the Director's) and deleted it from the data base.
Next we lopped off the top 0.5% of the remaining salaries on each list after recording this group's mediansalary. (This group consisted of between 18 and 20 individuals depending on the year.)
The next group to go was the top 5% of the remaining salaries after recording their median salary. (This group had between 179 and 188 individuals.)
This left only the 200 and 300 job class employees who are the worker bees. We split these remaining salaries into 200 job class and 300 job class lists and recorded their median salaries.
Finally, we plot the Director's salary and median salaries of the other four groups for each of the time periods in the figure titled LLNL Salaries.
The percentage increases in these plotted salaries (raises) for the periods 94-95, 95-96, and 96-Aug. 97 are shown in the figure titled Raises 1995-97. The data for period 96 to Aug. 97 represent midyear raises in FY97.
Interpretation
These data show that during the period Oct. 94 to Aug. 97 the
largest percentage raises went to those employees with the highest
salaries. This is certainly not surprising considering that these
individuals are the ones that determine how the raise package
is distributed. If this is bad news for you then we're sorry to
have ruined your day. This situation will not change until the
professional staff plays a role in salary determination.
Check out the updated salary curves
and maturity curves on our website
(http://www.idiom.com/~spse). If you don't have internet access,
phone the office for a hard copy (449-4846).
Human Resources is busy reworking UC personnel policies for LLNL. They solicit employee comments because it is "good business practice" as Mr. Perko likes to say. What happens to your comments? Ms. Kwei's line is "We take them under consideration".
For our part, SPSE is posting these three letters as a way
to keep the issues alive because LLNL's policies are part of your
employment contract. Whenever there is a grievance involving these
policies, HR argues "current practice" to the outside
Hearing Officer. (If your contract were arrived at by the process
of collective bargaining at least it would be cast in concrete
for the duration.)
Aug. 21, 1997
To: Gloria Kwei, Human Resources Department
Dear Gloria,
I believe that implementation of a "Restricted status job category" as described in last Friday's Newsline will be a disaster for science and for the laboratory. This implementation will denote a fundamental restructuring of the relationship that an employee bears to his peers and to LLNL and will mark the end of career science.
Previously, new employees came on board with the expectation of securing membership in our world class scientific and technical staff, to learn and understand from their peers and mentors, to define technical problems and seek new and innovative solutions. Now they will come on board for a short tour with the expectation of being told to "Do this," "Calculate that," and "Goodbye." There will no longer be a career expectation and in time LLNL will no longer be a world class laboratory.
If this new job status is implemented then the only career positions at the laboratory will be career management. We will then be a mini DOE-like organization of technical managers who hire in scientific temporaries to perform the specific tasks they deem important at the moment. Where will our new scientific leadership come from?
The career scientific and technical talent that we have assembled here, and are now losing through retirement and attrition, is the backbone of our institution and has been our most important contribution to the nation. The Human Resources Dept. is not doing an adequate job of replacing this talent. You would do much better to encourage career status at LLNL and rotate the management every six years.
Sincerely,
Stephen M. Matthews
Aug. 27, 1997
To: R. Perko, Staff Relations Division Manager
From: Bill O'Connell
My comments on the proposed "restricted-status job category."
1. The proposed policy statement does not say whether a restricted-status employee is a career employee, as current term and indefinite career employees are. Please state that this employee is a career employee. The reason for clarifying this is that certain benefits in the PPPM [Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual] apply to career employees. For example, in PPPM Section M.VI, a career employee with six months or more of service, who has developed a handicap after being employed, in addition to efforts at reasonable accommodation, MAY be selected for another position which he/she is qualified, without the position being posted.
2. The proposed policy specifically excludes the right to administrative review and grievance. This is not right for the category of employees who have a term duration which may be up to six years. Since the current category of term employee is being phased out as a corollary of the new category, it is clear that many new hires who might have been terms, and indeed many current terms if their employment period is extended, would be instead in this new category. Thus a current employee right is being taken away from a large number of employees. Other rights of employees to fair and competent administration cannot be held secure without the safeguard of an ultimate right to a grievance appeal to an arbitrator who is independent of the UC/LLNL management, including the right to binding arbitration. This proposed new category is probably contrary to University of California policies, which the LLNL branch of UC must be consistent with.
3. The proposed policy takes away the Medical Separation Policy (PPPM Sec. K.6) from this group of employees. This is not right. Under present policy, if the Laboratory, in the persons of the employee's Department, Human Resources, and Health Services, decide that the prospect of rehabilitation service and then reasonable accommodation on the employee's present job is not reasonably feasible, then the Laboratory may deliver a five-day notice of involuntary medical separation. (I am not sure how sick leave, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance fit into the timing in this prospect.) The employee can appeal through the grievance procedure, if other lesser paths of appeal are to no avail. Under the proposed policy, there is no Medical Separation Policy. Presumably the "at will" termination with or without cause would apply, with thirty days notice or pay in lieu of notice. Again, because of the lack of a grievance right, the employee would not be able to appeal such a Laboratory decision to an independent arbitrator.
4. The proposed new policy will make it more difficult for
the Laboratory to attract and hire talented and dedicated employees.
Thus the policy is against the interests of all.
Sept. 12, 1997
Lubbe Levin
Assistant Vice President
UC Human Resources
300 Lakeside Drive, 9th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612-3550
Dear Ms. Levin:
LLNL is in the process of changing its Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual (PPPM) and will contact your office for routine approval. I request that you do not approve these changes for the following reasons.
I am concerned that our personnel policies are departing significantly from the principles set forth in the University's Human Resource Management Initiative (HRMI). For example, the proposed personnel policy is more restrictive about issues subject to final and binding arbitration.
LLNL will argue that the proposed changes (1) are appropriate for this site and that the HRMI policies allow for local variances, (2) are minor and that the PPPM complies with the intent of the HRMI, and (3) are being made to reflect changes in the law or internal self-consistency or "current practice."
Please consider how our policy works in practice. First, on May 30th, I was involved with several others in a Meet and Discuss with the Staff Relations Division Leader in the LLNL Human Resources Department, Robert Perko, regarding the proposed changes. On direct questioning, Mr. Perko repeated his earlier remark that we are UC employees but "LLNL has never operated under UC personnel policies."
This must be some kind of hair splitting. We have always operated under the UC personnel policies and approved exceptions. So why does he keep repeating that we are not under UC personnel policies?
Second, the Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers recently reported on the Deneen Grievance in its last Newsletter. It challenged how LLNL can make changes to the personnel policies with no intention of telling the employees and then hold the employees accountable for them. This grievance illustrates "current practice" in applying the personnel policies here. It shows how my laboratory will fight its UC employees without any reference to the UC policies which attracted us here in the first place.
These examples show that LLNL now wants the prestige of the UC label without any accountability. It is being dishonest to its UC employees and discredits the institution of the UC.
When I signed on at LLNL I was younger and naive and did not ask for a copy of my contract. Now when I inquire, I get a hodgepodge of the latest policy memos or the answer "current practice." Because I was caught up in my work I did not notice how my contract was being undermined. Now I am looking over my shoulder and ask that you do not approve the proposed changes to our PPPM.
Sincerely yours,
George Craig, L-645
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." /William Somerset Maugham, Strictly Personal, 1941.
"And now here is a question that I have often asked myself: what is it that you young men really want? Is it to hold office immediately? But that is against the law, and the law was not made to keep able people out; it was made simply because you are unfit for office. Is it that you do not want to live on the same terms as everyone else? But members of the same State ought, in justice, to enjoy the same rights. There are people who will say that democracy is neither an intelligent nor a fair system, and that those who have the money are also the best rulers. But I say, first, that what is meant by the demos, or people, is the whole State, whereas an oligarchy is only a section of the State; and I say next that though the rich are the best people for looking after money, the best counselors are the intelligent, and that it is the many who are best at listening to the different arguments and judging between them. And all alike, whether taken all together or as separate classes, have equal rights in a democracy. An oligarchy, on the other hand, certainly gives the many their share of dangers, but when it comes to the good things of life it not only claims the largest share, but goes off with the whole lot. And this is what the rich men and the young men among you are aiming at; but in a great city these things are beyond your reach. What fools you are!" /Athenagoras in Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War.
"But even a PC paradise built for one sometimes needs that old mainframe system of support.... That's why the geek population should have cheered for the 185,000 Teamsters who united to force UPS to treat them fairly--to pay part-time contingent workers more than the 55 percent of full-time-hourly-pay they had been receiving; to give them a fair number of vacation days; and to have more opportunities for full-time employment. Geeks aren't so different: 27 to 40 percent of Silicon Valley employees are "contingent"--part-time or contracted to work on short- or long-term projects. True, they are "free" to live without health care, maternity leave, sick days and pension plans. The same belief in "individuality" and "freedom" that leads members of the digital work force to avoid confinement in conventional workplaces, also eschews as unseemly joint concerted action.... A well-known South Park Internet startup asked its 300 or so employees to sign a revised employment contract. The company said the new contract was necessary to prepare for a forthcoming public stock offering--and discouraged the employees, fairly strongly, from discussing the contract with each other. The contract was confusing, and contained unappealing terms, so when some employees asked me for advice, I (being both a geek and a lawyer) said they needed to talk to each other--to collaborate and ask as a group if they could negotiate together. "Negotiate jointly???" (insert gasps) "You mean, like a *union*?" "Yes," I responded, "like a union--like a group of you, so you don't have to be denied one by one." (Emphasis added--Editor) "No way. Unions suck. They control you--and are inefficient." "Well, then go ahead and ask for different terms on your own," I suggested. "No way. I'll get fired." So they signed the new contract, as is, in the name of efficiency and the spirit of individuality--an expression of their right to think for themselves at whatever cost.... But freedom is expensive when you can't afford health insurance, and independence is frustrating when your ideas--as well as your decision-making power--belong to your (contract) employer. Contingent workers, geeks included, are bottom-line cheap, obligation-free labor. So when they hear anti-union rants applauding their obdurate independence, they should look for the source of the rallying cry--it may well be coming from the execs gathered in the boardrooms. Ha-ha, joke's on you, cutting-edge diginaut. Collective action is good when it helps you get what you need--be it health care, hardware or flexible deadlines. As any engineer should know, numbers are powerful things." /Rebecca Eisenberg in "Joe Hill should have been a geek," San Francisco Examiner, 24 August 1997.
SPSE is seeing the Fall rush of individuals seeking remedies for their bruised sensibilities as a result the annual performance evaluation scam. You are paid for who you are, not what you do or how you do it. Get over it; enjoy work for the pleasure of exercising your gifts; and stop whining, the system is rigged. "Inputs" to the performance evaluation algorithms, and "targets" for salary vectors are selected to ensure the hierarchy is preserved. There is no possible change of the performance/salary formalism that will result in a significant change of pay distribution or career status within LLNL.
SPSE is challenging the drift of LLNL personnel policy away from the norms of the UC system; we have filed an unfair labor practice suit with PERB, and will probably escalate to legal action this fall. This effort goes to the root of our chief concern: the drive by LLNL management to free itself from UC constraints in the treatment of employees. By acting as a group on this effort we have a real possibility of affecting a positive change. Management prefers to divide us into "individuals" (I meet more and more soon-to-be-ex_employees) and to flood us with new policies and job categories (excuse me, "skills") that are all just leaves from the same branch of workforce marginalization. I prefer spending SPSE resources on this effort rather than in funding a tedious series of individual gripes.
We are seeking to collaborate with other employee groups to sponsor a "gathering of the tribes," and to have panel discussions on a wide range of issues under the general topic of "The Employee Experience at LLNL." The idea is to exchange information in a UN_style gathering of employee groups. Interested?, call.
During this summer the SPSE executive board voted to offer
our only employee, Cheryl Remillard, paid medical benefits. Thank
you, Richard Yamauchi for championing this. As SPSE president,
I failed to gather enough support for a union of 200 and 300 series
professionals, but I am very proud of wielding the gavel in favor
of Cheryl's benefits. Sometimes it's the little things I am most
proud of.
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