University Professional

& Technical Employees

CWA 9119, AFL-CIO

 

 

P.O. Box 1476

Los Alamos, NM 87544

August 4, 2003

 

 

Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for DOE Laboratories

Office of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board

U.S. Department of Energy

100 Independence Ave. SW

Washington, D.C. 20585

 

Dear Commission members:

 

University Professional and Technical Employees, UPTE-CWA 9119, Los Alamos Chapter submits the following comments for the Commission’s consideration. As an organization composed of members from all segments of the University of California workforce at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), i.e., scientists, engineers, technicians, administrative professionals, and general service employees, our comments represent sufficient unanimity of thought from our members to warrant its presentation to you in this manner. While the decision to compete the prime contract for LANL has already been made, decisions yet to be made by the Secretary of Energy will have wide implications for LANL and our sister University of California (UC) national laboratories.

 

  1. Competition is appropriate only when such a process will clearly result in providing increased value to the nation’s nuclear research and development capabilities. Unlike an entity engaged primarily in product development or manufacturing, a national laboratory must constantly explore new ideas in an environment that values independence, innovation, and creativity. There is a necessity to not just tolerate but also to actively encourage scientific ambiguity and complexity. Further, a national laboratory’s mission depends upon multi-disciplinary collaboration. LANL’s undisputed leadership in creating many of the ideas that resulted in the nation’s nuclear capability is a result of not only its history, but of its structure to this day.

 

  1. The environment at LANL that fostered this capability was born from the structures brought from the University of California. These structures – scientific as well as business ones – enabled the development of scientific inquiry, experimental verification, and peer review. It is our contention that these structures are best exemplified in America’s leading academic institutions. It is from these institutions that students become employees. UC is acknowledged as the leading public academic institution in the world in terms of the number and quality of its scientists. This can be measured in the number of Nobel laureates from its system. This measurement was fully acknowledged by General Leslie Groves 60 years ago as the nation looked to UC to attract scientists to the Manhattan Project.

 

  1. The decisions to compete a national laboratory contract made in a climate of allegation rather than fact deeply disturbs us. Future competition decisions must allow time for facts to be discovered through independent, transparent investigations. There must also be input from impacted communities, especially from communities like Los Alamos that remain company towns. Much greater transparency in the decision process must be evident and the process to compete or not compete must ensure this. Future decisions to compete a national laboratory contract should never be done in the manner in which the recent politically charged decision on the LANL contract competition was done.

 

  1. The decision to compete or not compete a national laboratory impacts the workforce. We maintain that it adversely affects scientists to such a degree that the Department of Energy will more likely fail in attracting and keeping scientists of the highest caliber. This risks the national laboratories mission. Scientists give up promising careers and, often, international recognition when they decide to serve the nation in an institution with a national security mission. A re-examination of one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s career and family stability for a work environment subject to potential changed terms and conditions of employment inevitably results. It will be impossible for the Department of Energy contractor to promise a stable career to scientists if competition of the operator contracts becomes the norm at the national laboratories. Changing terms and conditions of employment at national laboratories are not conducive to intellectual work and can lead to disruptive and divisive employment practices.

 

  1. It is our position that a single entity should manage each national laboratory. To have more than one entity engaged as the prime contractor to manage and operate a single national laboratory will lead to varying corporate values and structures that create an environment detrimental to mission-focus among employees. Such an environment could easily lead to deepening divisions in the workforce based on gender, ethnicity, education, or job title. It is the antithesis of a workforce united in support of a common mission.

 

  1. We urge the Commission to give higher considerations to the university-non-profits competing for national laboratory contracts. The for-profit business model carries more risks than we believe prudent. We consider it inappropriate for a “lowest” bidder to engage in the development of the nation’s nuclear stockpile. More importantly, national security dictates that nuclear weapons not be part of the global economy. For example, the intellectual property rights that would belong to a private sector contractor could place national security secondary to stockholder private interests. Private sector contributions to national laboratories are most appropriately made through subcontracts to assist in specific, well-defined projects.

 

  1. There are no specific outcomes that we can suggest that can be used to measure the intellectual capacity of competitors to meet the known and as-yet unknown needs of the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. While specific quantitative measures can be gathered, e.g., the number of patents granted, the breadth and depth of the scientific disciplines represented by the patents, the number of publications in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, the citation impacts of key journal articles, it remains doubtful that these quantitative measures can suggest very much about the use of an entity’s intellectual capital to accomplish the core missions of a national laboratory engaged in stockpile stewardship and national defense.

 

 

  1. UPTE recognizes that hard-won organizing rights for the employees at LANL can repeatedly be jeopardized in competitions. While labor rights might be preserved under the federal law if a private sector company wins the competition, it is unlikely that labor rights will automatically exist with other academic or non-profit competitors. This will leave the Los Alamos workforce without adequate labor rights protections. We maintain that organized labor provides the American taxpayer with the canary-in-the-coalmine. When problems arise in the workplace, the organized worker has legitimate venues for righting the wrongs. Lacking an independent labor organization, the American taxpayer is more vulnerable to management cover-up of waste, fraud, and abuse at the national laboratories.

 

  1. Finally, there can be no greater source to measure success than a proven record in management of a national laboratory through decades of changing priorities and needs. Can competitors show a proven long record of experience meeting national objectives and in the retention of top quality scientists, in particular theoretical physicists, weapons designers, and experimentalists?

 

  1. The above comments do not deal with many of the issues involved in decisions to compete or not compete a national laboratory contract. Of most immediate concern to the employees at LANL are the decisions as to what requirements will be included in requests for bids for the LANL prime contract.

 

UPTE is deeply concerned with the attitude of the Commission with respect to these matters. We feel that public hearings in the locality of the facility that is to be affected are necessary, at a minimum, to obtain input from impacted workers and communities.

UPTE is available for any more detailed discussion that the Commission may desire.

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

 

Theresa Gonzales Connaughton

President, UPTE at Los Alamos

 

Cc:

Senator Pete Dominici

Senator Jeff Bingaman

Representative Tom Udall

Representative Heather Wilson

Jelger Kalmijn, UPTE Systemwide President

Jeff Colvin, Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Doug Owen, UPTE at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory