Quite a few of us Excludables must have been submitting applications, since when we attempted to submit ours, the clerk had to run and get her "verbage" to write on the bottom of the application why They were declining to accept the form.
Omaha Beach, D-day, 6 Jun 1944
If you feel you wish to pursue this matter, PLEASE submit your name and PII to the website's email so that we can get an accurate count of the number of folks affected.
The attorney who is representing the LLNL workers who were RIFed in 2008 has placed a post on our site. We will attempt to contact him tomorrow about a further plan of action.
(As an afterthought, if any of you in the affected group are Vets, please let us know.)
GUY
Here's the key:
ReplyDeleteThe Federal Government is paying for Severance. Did DOE/NNSA approve LANS "excluding" workers from this severance? Is the Federal Government complicit with LANS in violating the rights of LANS employees? Did LANS capriciously not inform the Federal Government that they were going to deny eligible workers from access to severance payment(s) from the Federal Government? Why was there a disproportionate number of workers to Managers?
Is this the verbiage they used"We decline to accept your application because you were excluded by senior management due to your job classification."
ReplyDeleteIf there is no policy stating the terms of "excluded workers" in the context of a VRP and severance then LANS screwed themselves.
ReplyDeleteLANS also denied "excluded" workers to "due process" by not allowing an appeal process. LANS at minimum should of had an appeal process to ensure there was no hint of discrimination. Opps....too late LANS!
ReplyDeleteWe might also want to consider 'local' attorneys. There are at least a couple that have pretty good track records against the Lab. An out-of-state attorney would probably have to charge more too just because of the logistics involved with distance.
ReplyDeleteLANS Management named it the "excluded list" because they excluded themselves from it. If the excluded list was so important and exclusive why didn't Management exclude it's Scientists 5s? Only one Group excluded it Scientist 5s. Neither T-Division nor X-Division, the most exclusive and core mission important Divisions at LANS did not exclude one Scientist 5 from the VRP. This "excluded list" is the most discombobulated mess I have ever seen!
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I have this straight. This blog is all about whining that a few people are not being paid to leave the laboratory?
ReplyDeleteSeriously?
You guys need to get a life! Retire if you wish, no one is stopping you.
ReplyDeleteNo one has harmed you, if you want free money then work for it!
LANL offered a cash incentive for employees to volunteer to terminate employment on April 5th. An employee could decide whether to volunteer or not volunteer. Employees on the excluded list were precluded from making that decision.
ReplyDeleteEmployees on the excluded list are in three broad categories. The first category is happy because their employment is not threatened. The second group is ambivalent because the incentive was not enough to consider termination. The third group is unhappy because the incentive was enough for them to voluntarily terminate employment at LANL, but they were denied the opportunity to do so.
In addition to the above comment, one should note that many of the excluded employees were recently transferred from groups or divisions where their contemporaries and compatriots are free to take the VSP. In some cases, individuals were asked to take System Engineering jobs at their managers request to help out the Laboratory. The was most likely because the Laboratory has had great difficulty filling the system engineering positions, particularly the Cognizant System Engineering positions in the nuclear facilities. Two or three years ago, the Lab even had a "bonus" program to entice other Laboratory Engineers to take the CSE jobs. This program was only partially successful. Makes one wonder why....?
DeletePerhaps, since most engineers think of themselves as builders and doers, nobody wants that "required" DOE position, which is mostly paper pushing, or
Perhaps the Labs recent emphasis on recruiting Post Docs and Scientists (no offense here) rather that also having a co-equal program to recruit top level engineers has led the laboratory to have a career field that is filled with "Silverbacks", and there are very few young, up-and-coming engineers to be mentored.
Be aware that LANS Management did not simply "request" kindly that we accept these crappy facility jobs. Bret Knapp and Craig Leasure personally threatened to "fire" me if I didn't leave W-Division and move to ES-Division. This all occurred before they "enticed" workers through the bonus program.
DeleteLANS is requiring the departing employee to sign a "waiver" absolving LANS of any sort of wrongdoing in perpetuity in order for the employee to receive his severance check. The instructions for the RIF explicitely indicate, no-waiver/no-check.
ReplyDelete