Report to NASA Council of IFPTE Locals
by Wes Darbro
The meeting lasted a little more than an hour and was attended by Greg Junemann, Matt Biggs, and myself of IFPTE; and Mike Griffin, Chris Shank, Toni Dawsey (HR), T. J. Jezierski (Deputy of Chief of Staff, Paul Morrell) and one other (didn't get name or office, didn't sit at the table) of NASA.
From my point of view, it was one engineer to another. The questions were answered from what appeared to be frankness and not saying things were better than they appeared.
My preparation was a sheet of paper organized around 4 points plus a miscellaneous list.
- RIF, likeliness, who, trigger, cost/benefit
- Change in NASA Capability Structure
- Improving Excellence within NASA
- Funding of the Exploration Program
- Miscellaneous
I asked him what was an appropriate number of "uncovereds" and at first he said none. I asked him who would do the work we were proposing if there were no "uncovered", that our loads change during the year and we often have 2 or 3 proposals out at any given time. He seemed to start thinking and said he knew the scene and that he had once done proposals and that it is particularly done in science. Then after I had launched into the economics example where it is commonly stated that "full employment" is 4 percent unemployed, he made a memorable statement on RIFs; he would not promise to do no RIF, but if the number of "uncovereds" were down to two hundred or so (maybe he said 2 or 300) it would not make sense to do a RIF. This is also what Toni reported to Tingwald after the meeting. Griffin said that since he had been Administrator that he had reduced the number from over 2000 to between 800 and 900. He said he was reducing Hdqrs employees from 1600 plus to 1250 but didn't say how. I asked if in a general RIF would the engineers and scientists be the ones to go and he said that would not be his wishes but that he had identified many that were uncovered and that is where a lot will come from. I took it that he couldn't say about the administrative types, etc. We were left with a very uneasy feeling about any groups that NASA was not going to do much of, such as Aeronautics, Micro-gravity, etc., that every "uncovered" should give serious consideration to move to any "covered" position and let the problems it caused be worked out later. I believe at this time he thinks he will be RIFing later this year.
When I told him that I was afraid the structure of NASA was changing forever, he sharply disagreed and so we had a long discussion on this as I told him of aeronautics, of micro gravity, of biotech, etc. and then he said oh OK I see what you mean. I asked about other countries space programs and their general makeup, and how temporary this "building of the rockets" is going to be. He certainly convinced some of us that he only has a little money to carry this out and there is no way that we can do exploration the way we did before. Any other decision would only put different people out of work. I told him that 50 years from now there will be a NASA and we shouldn't take a course that requires us to change directions every few years, that I appreciated the fact that he was a technical person and could understand all the arguments and from them I hoped he would make the right decisions. I told him he ought to be talking to the leading Democratics the way that Goldin did and when he can sell his programs to both parties, it means that NASA will have a more stable future and he agreed.
My discussion on the improving of NASA's excellence, its prestige, and the morale of its people followed. I brought excerpts from an Apollo era book (Managing NASA in the Apollo Era) and read from these. These included a Contractor/Civil Servant discussion and a quote by von Braun on keeping a lot of in-house work for Civil Servants so that they do not become stale as engineers and Contractors lose respect for them and hence NASA not be able to Contract out effectively. I left two pages with him and since Griffin said that he had read the book (didn't remember the quote though) Chris Shank wanted to know the name and I provided it to him. I do not remember all the discussion we had on performance appraising, of awards, competencies but I do remember saying that you RIF by CLs and you buyout by competencies and both remove employees from NASA. Seems that the same methods should apply. He didn't know what CLs meant and I explained and also the RIF process and the HR person did not correct me so what I said must have been substantially correct. I told him that universally canceling programs gets rid of the superstars as well as the average and that if he were to only pare down the program, then he could save the most excellent employees. We have to make our employees believe if they do a great job that they will be able to continue to work, that is how you should reward excellence, that is the least we can do for them. About this time Greg Junemann made a comment in support of employees as people which followed "Mike's given" that we have only the vision to support (and I know I am not quite capturing Griffin's statement). I told Griffin that the Union's main wish is that we provide the engineer with the best environment that can be had so that if at some time in his life he had to leave NASA employment that companies everywhere would say, "that's a NASA engineer, he would be really good to have working for us."
On funding Exploration, I asked what were his plans, did they include early scraping of the Shuttle, changes in the ISS and level funding for science where inflation would reduce NASA's science. He said all those and more, he said that every week or so we do another exercise on this. They are still working on this. He mentioned at one time his contributions such as saving jobs by keeping the Systems Engineering within NASA, his compassion for people, having been laid off twice himself.
I asked if he could describe how the unions and management might work together to make for a better NASA and a better place to work. He had no ideas. I then said that he had said he would not RIF if the uncovereds were low enough and that could be accomplished by people either taking the buyout or by uncovereds transferring to covered jobs; so it seemed to me that if the Unions would agressively advocate for these, then a RIF is avoidable if we are successful enough and he agreed.
Miscellaneous things said throughout the meeting, mostly though at the beginning or end were:
- It's nice to have someone technical leading this Agency.
- We have observed that every position in which you replace someone, it is by a person more technical than the one displaced and he said "that was one of my promises".
- We generally think "attitude" is everything and that we are interested in your general attitude for space and the "attitude" of those that advise and affect you. We are reading as much of your writings as we can and I mentioned your recent address to the American Astronautical Society "NASA and the Business of Space" November 18 and your comparing the NASA effort to that of building the "interstate highway" across the Solar System.
- I said there are many retired people that you can make use of for lessons learned in the Apollo and Shuttle development and that they are ready and cheap. He said that he is using some and agreed that their advice is not that costly.
- I said the great evil is "lack of money".
- He said because he is trying to shift work packages from the have Centers to the have-nots, that Centers need to trust each other to do the work needed.
That is all I remember and we ended peaceably, most shaking hands. And when we did I asked him about his interest in golf and he said he was golfing little nowadays, but had a 3 handicap last year. I have a 7.
Wesley Darbro, President of NCIL