Oct. 16, 2003

The Performance Action Track

This letter is to follow up the letters of Forsman and Pao, and to supply some additional background. The Performance Action Track (PAT), a part of AM109, is peculiar to the Laboratory. It is not part of policy at the University of California, or the other UC labs, which seem to feel no need of such a policy, and there is some question if it was approved by UC. It was adopted by the Lab in 1993, during the period when a flurry of such changes were adopted, many not approved by UC prior to issue. This is known, because of California Public Records Act requests on this matter.

Two parts of the PAT seem particularly objectionable. The employee has no counter to "goals" set under the PAT, and these can be unreasonable with no adequate checks and balances. The other part is that the employee who successfully completes the PAT can't file a complaint against his manager for putting him/her on a PAT. These two shortcomings create an opportunity for abuse by management. I have a friend who had the PAT used against him, he suspects, simply because he was outspoken and disagreed with the group leader. Upon surviving the PAT, an unpleasant experience, he had no recourse. This certainly discouraged outspokenness, by him and others.

I have long advocated the use of UC policies at the Lab. If being operated by UC is such a wonderful idea why does the Lab not use UC policies? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory do use UC policies, albeit old UC policies; the Lab should also. The PAT, and other such bad policies, are reason enough. They do not exist at UC.

--Chris Mechels