ABQjournal: LANL Employees' Jobs Guaranteed

Saturday, October 2, 2004

LANL Employees' Jobs Guaranteed

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer
    The National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed Friday in writing what it has promised for more than a year: Employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory are guaranteed their jobs, benefits and retirement, no matter who wins the upcoming competition to run the weapons lab.
    Shortly after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the LANL contract would be put up for competitive bidding in April 2003, he made the verbal commitment that employees at the laboratory would not lose the benefits and retirement plan offered by the University of California. The UC contract to run LANL expires Sept. 30, 2005. The university has run LANL since 1943 and has never had to compete for the contract.
    Now Abraham's promise is in writing.
    According to the "Formal Acquisition Plan," a new operator must commit to "offer employment to all personnel employed by UC at LANL, with the exception of those senior management individuals identified by the offeror, at comparable compensation packages," according to the plan.
    Employees will get "a pension plan that maintains the benefit accrual terms and conditions of the current UC pension plan," and can apply their years of service under UC to the new employer.
    For those belonging to LANL's union, the University Professional and Technical Employees union, they are guaranteed the new operator "must any certified collective bargaining agents and their existing bargaining agreements."
    Past union president and recently retired LANL employee Betty Gunther said she is pleased with the wording, even though the union doesn't yet have a collective bargaining agreement in place.
    Formed in 1997 and officially recognized by LANL in 2000, the union hasn't held an employee election to gain an agreement yet, she said.
    She said employees will feel relieved about the requirement that a new contractor must keep current LANL employees and their benefits.
    "They will feel less in danger," she said. "Everybody figured they had to retire to save their retirement."
    NNSA, the federal agency that oversees LANL, included in the plan released Friday an outline for how it intends to conduct the upcoming competition and included some of the requirements it expects the next operator of the nuclear weapons lab to meet.
    Without getting into specifics, the plan simply states the next operator will be expected to safeguard nuclear materials and information, recruit the best staff and scientists, and maintain vigorous research and development and a "creative scientific culture."
    NNSA also announced in the plan that it expects to have a draft request for proposals on the competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory by the middle of this month.
    It also plans to make a final decision on the competition by July 1, 2005, so the next operator will have three months to transition to full control of the weapons laboratory when the current contract held by the University of California expires Sept. 30, 2005.
    NNSA will release the draft request for proposals within a few weeks and provide a 30-day comment period, during which NNSA will meet with companies and institutions that have expressed interest in running LANL.
    Since Abraham announced that the LANL contract would be put out for competition, potential bidders have been awaiting the document that will lay out what the government expects of the next laboratory manager.
    While the university operates the laboratory under a contract, the agreement has been added to and modified over the years. And because the LANL contract has never been offered for competition before, NNSA and DOE have never had to put into a proposal all that LANL does and what the government expects future operators to do.