[Cuga] Message from the UGBoD

[Lorelei Chopard]

As you presumably know, 46 Jefferson Lab employees were laid off in the 
recent restructuring event on January 15, 2014. The Users Group Board of 
Directors wishes to express, on behalf of the users, our gratitude for 
the service of these employees to the lab and the user community, and to 
wish them the best for the future. While we understand the need of the 
lab to adjust to programmatic changes as well as the unfortunate 
realities of shrinking support for scientific research by the federal 
government, we regret the sudden loss of such a large number of people 
(over 5% of the entire staff) who, in some cases, have served the lab 
for decades.

In addition to the hardship faced by the affected employees, the 
restructuring has made this difficult time for everyone involved and 
will continue to present challenges to the JLab community as we move 
forward towards 12 GeV operations.

In the wake of this event, a large number of users have contacted us to 
express their shock and dismay about both the scale and the manner in 
which these layoffs occurred. While the lab did inform its employees of 
the necessity for the restructuring event, the specific time table, and 
the extent of the layoffs, many users were entirely unaware of this 
plan.As such, the lab's announcement came as a complete surprise to a 
large fraction of the user community.In addition, several users 
expressed outrage at the fact that people whom we have collaborated 
closely with were treated in a demeaning manner (being given 1/2 hour to 
leave the premises, with computer accounts closed and badges deactivated 
after being informed of their fate). We wish that a more appropriate 
treatment of our colleagues could have prevailed, even if the layoffs 
themselves were unavoidable. We worry that the reputation of the lab 
with parts of the international nuclear physics community has been 
clouded and, above all, that the morale of the remaining employees has 
been imperiled.We are also concerned about the potential for this to 
have significant impacts on the scientific mission of the lab which we 
wish could have been avoided or mitigated.

In light of these concerns, the BOD undertook an intense conversation 
with lab management about these issues at the Users Group Board Meeting 
which occurred last week (January 23, 2014). At the meeting, we passed 
on the concerns we received and made it clear that the user community 
was unhappy with the way the layoffs were carried out and the lack of 
information made available to the users.Please see the minutes from the 
meeting and presentations from lab management for details on the 
restructuring and the subsequent discussions.We expect that further 
information on the restructuring will be provided by JLab management, 
and discussions of the impact of the structural changes (included in the 
presentations to the board) are already in the process of being 
communicated through the Halls as the changes are implemented.

In addition, we are (and have been) working on ways to improve the 
information transfer to the board and the user community at large. Most 
importantly, all of us (staff, users, and management) fervently hope 
that such drastic actions will not become necessary again.

Regards,

John Arrington, on behalf of the Users Group Board of Directors.

The minutes from the board meetings as well as the presentations to the 
board are available on the Users Group Wiki
( https://wiki.jlab.org/cugwiki/index.php/UGBoD_Meetings).

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/cuga/attachments/20140128/602e8500/attachment-0001.html