Nathaniel Solley/File

Two national laboratories in the Bay Area are set to furlough employees and halt research operations by Oct. 21 if the government shutdown remains unresolved.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — the second-largest employer in Alameda County behind UC Berkeley — is set to close along with Sandia National Laboratories, also located in Livermore. The furlough would affect roughly 6,500 and 1,000 employees at the two labs, respectively. Both labs conduct research and development in nuclear arms control and nonproliferation technologies.

In a statement released Friday, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said, “The 7,500 employees at risk of being furloughed … are among the best scientists and researchers in our country, and through no fault of their own they face the possibility of not receiving their paycheck at the end of the month.”

Swalwell, along with 10 other members of Congress from California including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, sent a letter Friday to U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz requesting back pay for furloughed laboratory employees after the shutdown is over.

Oct. 1 marked the beginning of the government shutdown due to an impasse over the federal budget.

Sandia spokesperson Michael Janes said the lab is in the process of developing contingency plans around the possibility of “a safe, secure and orderly shutdown of the labs.”

Previously appropriated funds from government contracts will allow Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, located in the Berkeley Hills, to remain open and operational, Berkeley lab spokesperson John Weiner said. The Berkeley lab employs an estimated 4,200 researchers and support staff.

Weiner said in an email that the lab is analyzing how and when programs and operations will have to adapt, adding that if the impasse over the federal budget is prolonged, impacts to research and employees would be “unavoidable.”

Peter Nugent, adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and senior scientist at the Berkeley lab, confirmed the lab will stay open as long as funds from existing contracts are available.

“For most divisions, this (goes) into November or December due to carryover,” Nugent said. “Then all bets are off.”

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, another national lab in the Bay Area that employs more than 1,500 researchers, will also remain open past Oct. 21.

At a town hall meeting held Sunday in Livermore, Swalwell addressed more than 200 employees from the two labs in Livermore.

“Not only will the labs’ cutting-edge scientific research be put on hold during a furlough period, our national labs could face an irreparable brain drain as our bright young scientists opt for the private sector,” Swalwell said in a press release.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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Henry Lagorio, an expert in seismic design and a professor emeritus of architecture at UC Berkeley, died after a six-year struggle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases Oct. 1. He was 90.

Lagorio was a professor in the UC Berkeley department of architecture for 43 years. His study of architectural design for earthquake safety led to his collaboration with many federal organizations, developing methods for mitigating consequences of earthquakes and plans for recovery after a disaster.

As associate dean of the College of Environmental Design, he helped launch the Center for Environmental Design Research, which fosters studies in sustainable building technologies and design.

“(He) was a mentor — a man to be admired and a role model,” said Richard Bender, Lagorio’s colleague and a professor emeritus of architecture. “His solid footing and friendships in the ‘earthquake world’, the National Science Foundation and the American Institute of Architects set us on a path to interesting and groundbreaking work.”

Lagorio received a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1944 and a master’s in architecture in 1945 from UC Berkeley after a teacher at Oakland Technical High School suggested he explore the field.

After graduating, he served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. Discharged as a staff sergeant, he was invited by Robert Gordon Sproul, the 11th UC president, to teach first-year architecture courses at UC Berkeley.

A pioneer in his field, Lagorio was the first architect to serve with the NSF in the Research Applied to National Needs division, working on projects to improve industrial sectors of the country.  He was also the first architect to be a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, serving on its various committees and on the editorial board of Earthquake Spectra, the institute’s professional journal.

During a sabbatical in Rome, Lagorio met Natalie Coce, who was working as a secretary at the U.S. embassy. The two were both from Oakland, and they married in San Francisco in 1962.

“He was very quiet with a tremendous sense of humor,” said Natalie Lagorio.

Strengthening architectural research was a priority for Lagorio, who worked to legitimize the role of architects in the field of earthquake-hazard design and research. In 1978, he was asked by the University of Hawaii to help advance its department of architecture into the School of Architecture. He became a Fellow of the AIA in 1997.

Elizabeth Byrne, former head of the Environmental Design Library at UC Berkeley, fondly remembered Lagorio as a “lovely, kind and very smart guy” who was “a joy to work with.”

Lagorio is survived by his wife.

A funeral mass will be  held Oct. 17 at 10:30 a.m. at Newman Hall, Holy Spirit Parish, 2700 Dwight Way at College Avenue.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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The TRUST Act, or the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools Act, will prevent local law enforcement agencies from detaining undocumented individuals on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than 48 hours if they are eligible for release or have not committed a serious felony.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced the bill as a response to the Secure Communities federal program, which allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to screen detainees based on their immigration status by running their fingerprints through a federal database.

“While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead,” Brown said in a press release. “I’m not waiting.”

Last fall, Brown vetoed an earlier iteration of the law, requesting that certain types of serious crimes that were not part of that version, such as child abuse, be included in the list of serious felonies.

The law Brown signed had been amended to include the changes and is designed to  help rebuild trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. According to the law, undocumented residents are less likely to cooperate with police when it “could result in deportation.”

Secure Communities has led to the deportation of more than 90,000 California residents — more than in any other state, according to data from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Last Tuesday, UC President Janet Napolitano, previously Secretary of Homeland Security, met with students who were part of the Statewide Multicultural Student Coalition, a universitywide group of undocumented students and their supporters that formed in response to her appointment.

At the meeting, Napolitano informed the students that she had discussed the TRUST Act with Brown, telling him she thought it would be “good for the state of California,” said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

Leti Volpp, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, said California should encourage legislation that recognizes immigrants as part of the community rather than removing them from it.

However, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., raised concerns about public safety issues and how law enforcement officials would be able to arbitrarily determine which individuals will be subject to immigration enforcement.

“(The law would) force them to release people who should be left in custody,” Vaughan said.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, undocumented individuals accounted for 6.8 percent of California’s population and 9.7 percent of the state’s labor force in 2010.

There are about 200 undocumented students on campus as of 2012, according to Meng So, the campus’s first undocumented student program coordinator.

Volpp said she hopes the TRUST Act will “remove daily insecurities” for undocumented students in California.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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Anthony Bongco/Staff

The head of California’s vast community college system formed a group to consider the viability of adding four-year bachelor’s degree options to its campuses.

Brice Harris, chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, assembled the Baccalaureate Degree Study Group in August to examine demand for and cost of the degree programs while considering the effects of deviating from the community college system’s traditional role. California would join a growing number of states whose community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees.

In addition to members from the community college system, the 16-person committee includes representatives from the UC and CSU systems. It will make recommendations to Harris in December, and if the system’s governing board accepts the recommendations, the proposal would require approval from the state Legislature, the governor and an accrediting commission authorized by the U.S. Department of Education.

Michael Morvice, president of the California Community College Student Affairs Association, stated that the degree program would benefit students by providing them with additional options.

“If there is a need in society, why not consider and review it?” Morvice said, citing the four-year degree model of Florida’s community colleges.

With more than 2.3 million students across 112 campuses, California’s community college system is the largest higher education system in the United States.

Norton Grubb, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, suggested that the community college system’s traditional function — transferring students to four-year institutions as outlined in the Master Plan for Higher Education — might be overshadowed by a baccalaureate degree option.

“It’s a really bad idea, a really poor idea,” he said. “Community colleges have a lot to do already without having to work with baccalaureate programs.”

The plan, implemented in 1960, differentiated the functions of California’s three pillars of public postsecondary education: the UC, CSU and community college campuses. This three-tiered system allows the institutions to fulfill different roles as a coherent and noncompeting system.

“(The) UC has historically viewed the state’s Master Plan as an efficient way of managing and allocating limited resources to equally important higher education functions,” said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron. According to her, the university is waiting on recommendations but reiterated its commitment to the plan, adding that it has served California well.

Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, was critical of the proposed degree program, saying it drifts from the mission of the Master Plan by duplicating efforts in the tiered system and shifting costs to students.

“Instead, California’s community college system should look at innovative ways to open up the courses that are overenrolled, like entering into an online course-sharing consortium,” Fishman said.

The group is scheduled to meet again Oct. 15.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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Mitchell Handler/Staff

More than 60 workers protested Friday afternoon in front of the UC Office of the President in Oakland after the University of California decided to implement its latest wage and pension offer for service employees.

The Oakland-based union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299 gathered in response to the university’s decision to legally implement its latest offer in a contract dispute between more than 8,000 service employees and the UC system. The policy will affect the percentage of wages distributed toward the revised pension plan. The university made its last offer Sept. 24 with what it said in a statement was a “reasonable approach to pension reform,” a proposition AFSCME declined.

Under the new plan, AFSCME service workers will be subjected to a two-tiered pension system, which allocates 6.5 percent of worker pay toward pensions for those hired prior to July 1, up from the previously allocated 5 percent. Workers hired after July 1 must contribute 7 percent. The university will also contribute 12 percent of employee pay to pensions, a jump of 2 percent.

The line of demonstrators, composed mostly of UC Berkeley service workers, marched in front of the UC building entrance holding signs and chanting “raises for them, crisis for us” and “implementation equals theft.” Marching was accompanied by intermittent recesses, during which workers converged around AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger, Shop Steward Arnold Meza and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who each addressed the crowd.

“It’s time for AFSCME to stand up for UC workers,” Worthington said. The university has “chosen negation, not negotiation,” he said.

Worthington described the implementation of the new policy as “extreme” and “unreasonable.” Additionally, he brought up concerns that the UC system might create a precedent whereby it will move to implement offers without completing negotiations with workers.

UC spokesperson Shelly Meron reiterated statements made by the university earlier in the week, saying the changes bring about “necessary pension reforms that will ensure the long-term viability of our retirement program.” Meron indicated that eight other unions representing 14 bargaining units and nonrepresented employees have already adopted these reforms.

But service workers painted a different picture at the protest. Maria Sonia Munsino, a food-service employee at UC Berkeley, characterized the negotiations as a struggle between workers and executives. With the help of a translator, Munsino said she is worried that benefits under the future implementation would “not be able to support her family of four.”

According to AFSCME’s Facebook event page, the protest was scheduled to run from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. There were no police officers present, and the demonstration remained as peaceful as it began.

Meza said that there are further demonstrations planned and suggested that workers might strike later this year, although he did not offer any further specifics on when that might take place.

Mitchell Handler contributed to this report.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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