Nov 18, 2007

Comment of the Week, Sunday Edition

One perspective, as provided by a pair of comments from the Post November 19 RIF News post.

Myself, I expect Anastasio on Monday to continue to soft-sell the prospects of a large number of upcoming RIFS. He's got nothing to lose by continuing to sound like the good guy in this business, and nothing to win by publicly acknowledging that the expected numbers could represent job loss for a significant fraction of the work force.

Regardless of the face that he puts on it, every passing day at current staffing levels under the current CR increases the number of RIFS that will be necessary if Congress funds LANL at a substantially lower budget this year, as is anticipated. The fact that LANS' annual award fee will be in no way affected by a large layoff at LANL pretty much guarantees that LANS will continue to be indifferent, at best, to any suggested approaches for reducing the impact of upcoming budget shortfalls.

Good luck,

-Gus

_______________________________________________________


You guys just don't seem to get it.

LANS has *no* desire to cut overhead.
They *want* to reduce staffing levels at LANL.
They *don't* want to encourage WFO.
They *do* want to gear up for production-scale pit fabrication.
LANS will *not* use any part of their annual award fee to fund a voluntary incentive program. - 10:47 PM

Yes, you are right. It's no longer about the science. Those days are over. It's only about the money to be made running this place. Or should I say, running this place into the ground. I get it now.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If there is any possible way to make the present situation at LANL more depressing and demoralizing, I'm sure LANS can figure out a way to do it.

Anonymous said...

Remember the history of Bechtel contracting.

LANS appears to be doing NNSA's bidding, nothing more, nothing less.

I blame NNSA not LANS so much.

Anonymous said...

Anastasio is not a leader. A leader would not take the "soft sell" (i.e. sissy approach). A leader would approach hard topics directly and deal with them.

Anastasio hem's and haw's and is scared people will not like him.

Well, the ahrd truth is, noone likes him. Hear that Mike?

Anonymous said...

Can we petition NNSA for a real leader? So far they are sending the F students in leadership.

Anonymous said...

Supposedly, NNSA/DOE stopped letting a real leader run the Lab long ago when they got annoyed at Agnew.

Agnew was too uppity.

Anonymous said...

Gussie,

I believe you've got it right. Anastasio's message for today will be how hard he's fighting for us. How he's doing his best to secure an attractive voluntary separation package. How there are difficult challenges working with NNSA's declining budgets. How LANL's situation is many years in the making. Yada, yada, yada. He won't make a single mention of the astronomical increases in management costs brought by LANS.

He'll give the "fought the good fight but lost" speech next week.