Pay for rehires broke Sandia rules

Sandia National Laboratories has repeatedly retained former employees as consultants at higher salaries than they were paid while working at Sandia, according to an investigation by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.

Doing so does not violate federal regulations, according to a report released Wednesday, but increasing the pay of a contractor compared to their salary while at Sandia violated Sandia’s rules, the investigators found.

The investigation also concluded that the ability to simply rehire retirees stands in the way of Sandia’s plans to transfer historical knowledge to younger employees.

Headquartered in Albuquerque, Sandia is a federally funded research center managed for the U.S. Department of Energy by defense giant Lockheed Martin.

In one case, a former employee continued to work at Sandia for 10 years as a subcontractor under two separate five-year contracts, according to the Inspector General’s report.

The investigation was triggered by an anonymous complaint that Sandia employees were in essence seeing an increase in pay by retiring and then returning to do similar work at higher pay as consultants. The complaint alleged that “Sandia officials responsible for approving certain hiring actions were adept at circumventing rules and regulations.”

Sandia spokeswoman Sue Holmes noted that the investigators did not find any actions by Sandia that violated federal guidelines, and that the federal investigators did not recommend any changes in Sandia or Department of Energy policies as a result of the findings.

Sandia officials could not say Wednesday how widespread the practice is. The Inspector General’s investigators evaluated eight instances, but Holmes could not say Wednesday how many more cases of retirees being rehired as contractors there might be.
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal