Some pit manufacturing workers can carry over vacation

"We want to give these workers the maximum flexibility during their push to meet the rigorous deadlines for this project," Mah said. "At the same time, we're encouraging workers to take vacation if they need it for rest or for personal business, with appropriate approval from their group management."

The vacation accrual cap waiver for Pit Manufacturing and Certification Workers permits eligible full-time regular University of California employees to accumulate vacation hours above the so-called "use or lose" cap from Nov. 1, 2002 until Sept. 30, 2003. They can carry over those accumulated hours through April 1, 2005, after which they would forfeit any unused excess leave.

To be eligible, employees must report at least 25 percent of their effort in the Pit Manufacturing and Certification Project and must work in the Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT), Materials Science and Technology (MST) or Engineering Sciences and Applications (ESA) divisions, or in the Actinide Analytical Chemistry (C-AAC), Applied Chemical Technology (C-ACT) or Health Physics Operations (HSR-1) groups.

Managers in those organizations are responsible for identifying eligible employees and submitting monthly reports to Human Resources-Weapons Engineering and Manufacturing (HR-WEM), which will work with the Human Resources (HR) and Business Operations (BUS) divisions to administer the leave program. Employees who stop working in the project can use the excess vacation amounts up to six months after leaving the project or by April 1, 2005, whichever comes first.

Mah said that manufacturing a certifiable pit by April 2003 is one of the Laboratory's and the National Nuclear Security Administration's top priorities, which is why the Department of Energy approved the waiver.

Details of the waiver are spelled out in a memorandum and a set of frequently asked questions.

"To ensure our ability to meet this crucial milestone, we have had to place significant demands on the limited number of personnel with directly applicable skills and abilities to execute the necessary work," the memo reads. "The personnel working in this project have stepped up to the challenge and have placed many things on hold, both professionally and personally."

Eligible workers will continue to accrue vacation time at the normal rate and all other aspects of vacation policy will continue to conform to Laboratory policy, which is set out in AM 312, available at http://admin-manual.lanl.gov:1500/pdfs/adm/am312.pdf#acrohls=http://peak.lanl.gov:1592/cgi-
bin/w3vdkhgw?DSP=XML;qryJFAtXa4FP;adm-45 online.

The Laboratory previously announced incentive pay for workers engaged in mission-critical work at the Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building at TA-3. That information is available at http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/newsbulletin/2002/06/13/text02.shtml online.

-- Jim Danneskiold

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