Bruce Darling
Interim Vice President
Laboratory Management
1111 Franklin St.
Oakland, CA 94607-5200
Dear Mr. Darling:
Thank you for meeting with the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) delegation from Los Alamos and Livermore on March 19, 2003. We appreciate the time given us to express our viewpoints and place before you our concerns regarding employee treatment at UC's National Laboratories.
We regard the issues presented as serious concerns. Had Laboratory management been more responsive in the past, UC would have avoided the recent public scandals. We know that employees were fully knowledgeable of the waste, fraud and abuse occurring at LANL, for example, but because of the culture of fear that exists either did not report it, were ignored if they did report it, or were retaliated against for reporting it. This culture yielded its ultimate response in the firing of Mr. Walp and Mr. Doran.
It is recognized that changing the culture of fear to a culture of accountability is a huge task, but it is a task UPTE wants to be engaged in. UC can demonstrate to employees its commitment to management reform of its Labs by taking the following steps:
1. End the retaliation by scrapping the tools used by managers
to retaliate:
a. End the current subjective salary and performance review systems
at the Labs, replace with a fair and equitable transparent system.
b. Stop the ranking of employees at the Labs regardless of the
tools used.
c. End the Employees Between Assignments category at Livermore
as a tool of retaliation.
d. Remove managers who retaliate, discriminate, and instill fear
in the workforce, cutting their pay appropriately, and preventing
them from taking other management positions for a defined period
of time.
1. Recruit and promote a vastly more diverse workforce.
2. Institute uniform employee policies and procedures through
an open process that compares personnel policies in use at the
national Labs and replace them with a single system based on the
best terms and conditions of employment.
3. Apply UC's Time/Place/Manner rules to Los Alamos to enable
UPTE to reach the workforce through such instruments as the Laboratory
website, cafeteria tables, and newsstands on LANL premises.
4. Include UPTE in workplace safety initiatives such as PAAA compliance
programs and management walk-arounds to identify issues and implement
improvements.
5. Strengthen Whistleblowers protections at the Labs. Send the
Los Alamos workforce a clear message on the scope and worker protections
of UC established hotlines such as UC's Whistleblower hotline.
6. End the practice of having the Department of Energy provide
bottomless funding for fighting employee lawsuits regardless of
the merit of the case.
7. To demonstrate to Congress and the LANL workforce that UC is
seriously making positive change, it is not helpful to keep people
in high management positions who have questionable ethics and
moral judgment such as Frank Dickson and Rich Marquez at LANL.
8. Institute performance measures and independent audits to provide
a transparent means of evaluating human relations.
Our members at the national Labs, many who have been vocal critics of UC, want to participate with UC and the Labs in providing legitimate input to workers terms and conditions of employment. We ask that we remain engaged in open dialogue with UC and that you provide us with a response to our concerns in the near future. Further we invite you and Ms. Boyette to meet with our Local UPTE members during your visits to the national Labs.
Yours truly,
Jelger Kalmijn
President, UPTE
Cc: Judith Boyette
Manny Aragon, New Mexico State Senate
Denise Ducheny, California State Senate
Sue Byars
Theresa Connaughton
Doug Owen