RE: "Used to be that folks who worked at
LANL for "more than 30 years" thought that just the prospect of the
very generous pension (which is still available from LANS) was "nice
treatment." Now you want severance too?"
Reply: The issue here is not "wanting severance" . It is the expectation of "equitable treatment and fair dealing" under the employment contract we have with LANS. (Yes there is a contract) It is not too hard to find cases of highly skilled technical personnel (who are not managers) who are excluded, while their (sometimes) less technically skilled managers are allowed to "volunteer".
When looking at the list of excluded "Functional Areas" it would also not be too hard to make the argument that LANS has focused on the remaining senior and highly skilled, engineers, technicians, and scientists. Their argument is "we can't hire replacements". B.S. With enough money you can send men to the moon. (Well at least we used to be able to do that.) This is just another aspect of not funding the Lab and its Programs sufficiently. That will not change however, but the burden for that failure should not fall to the employees.
Additionally, it is not illogical to argue that excluding the highly paid, senior technicians, engineers and scientists will reduce the total severance payout liability. (Which I understand is to come out of G&A) Do you think there might have been some consideration of that in arriving at the Excluded list?
However, this selection process of theirs may backfire against them. Our gut feel is that many of the folks impacted by being "Excluded" are old fahrts such as ourselves. If so, we will be able to make a very good case for age discrimination, since as a Government funded activity, the Laboratory is expected to analyze the impact of their actions on "protected" groups.
Reply: The issue here is not "wanting severance" . It is the expectation of "equitable treatment and fair dealing" under the employment contract we have with LANS. (Yes there is a contract) It is not too hard to find cases of highly skilled technical personnel (who are not managers) who are excluded, while their (sometimes) less technically skilled managers are allowed to "volunteer".
When looking at the list of excluded "Functional Areas" it would also not be too hard to make the argument that LANS has focused on the remaining senior and highly skilled, engineers, technicians, and scientists. Their argument is "we can't hire replacements". B.S. With enough money you can send men to the moon. (Well at least we used to be able to do that.) This is just another aspect of not funding the Lab and its Programs sufficiently. That will not change however, but the burden for that failure should not fall to the employees.
Additionally, it is not illogical to argue that excluding the highly paid, senior technicians, engineers and scientists will reduce the total severance payout liability. (Which I understand is to come out of G&A) Do you think there might have been some consideration of that in arriving at the Excluded list?
However, this selection process of theirs may backfire against them. Our gut feel is that many of the folks impacted by being "Excluded" are old fahrts such as ourselves. If so, we will be able to make a very good case for age discrimination, since as a Government funded activity, the Laboratory is expected to analyze the impact of their actions on "protected" groups.
