Feb. 7, 2003

Some certainties

Al Charmatz's letter hit a sore spot in me. In these times of uncertainty, rumor mills are working overtime. All we hear are "bad things are coming this way." Who can blame anyone over age 50 for wanting to know where their retirement money will be?

The University of California has set up a hotline for Laboratory employees to report ethical lapses by Lab management. I fully agree with Interim Laboratory Director Nanos that we should get it all out now. At the same time, I'm wondering if there is a hotline for Lab employee to report other "ethics" problems.

For example, where can I register my dissatisfaction that the Department of Energy seems to have a culture of pointing fingers at someone else, a culture perpetuated from way on top, in administrations past and present? DOE seems to believe that the faster you point at someone else, the quicker you don't have to be accountable. [DOE] Secretary Spencer Abraham was certainly quick with his finger, so now he has nothing to do with the "scandals?"

Is there a hotline that will explain to me the exact relationship between DOE and NNSA? With all due respect to two very smart men, Gen. John Gordon and Ambassador Linton Brooks, I don't think these two guys have worked that out. Are they supposed to be administrators of a semi-autonomous organization in charge of the Lab, or DOE's "henchmen?" If it's the former, what about accountability at NNSA?

To whom can I complain about UC? I thought UC was going to use its vast resources to hire PriceWaterhouseCooper or Ernst and Young or somebody to do audits and assessments, but it surely looks like UC is conducting another internal investigation. Am I the only one that noticed that [UC President] Richard Atkinson (1) is retiring soon and (2) did not make eye contact with the employees when he came to give us the pep talk? That wasn't very reassuring. And why does UC think it's too good to have to bid on the contract?

Maybe I'm just confused by all these masters that we have to answer to. But it seems to me that one thing is certain, as Al Charmatz pointed out: nobody is looking out for the worker bees at the Lab. All the worker bees I know are mostly honest people trying to do mostly the right thing. I'm not saying that we are all perfect. Like everyone else, we occasionally make honest mistakes; more often than not, these mistakes probably stem from all the rules, subrules and metarules our masters have handed us. I think it would be fair at this moment for us employees to assume that we will be getting the short end of the stick no matter what. All of our masters have based their actions on the assumption that we are a bunch of greedy, lazy, overpaid people out to cheat the company and we must be punished. This seems to be what the American people (i.e., Congress) believe too.

I don't want to sound like a bitter whiner. I am not. I'm willing to do my part to correct any institutional problem that I could help correct. I fully support (and applaud) everything Director Nanos has done so far. I wish we could be assured that our hard work will not be rewarded with more beating.

--Karen Pao