EXECUTIVE MEMO
$50,000 Parachutes for NASA?
esperate to subtract another 3,500 jobs to reach a year 2000 staffing target of 17,500, NASA tried this summer pump more money into the buyout pot to lure senior, highly paid employees to eject. In July, NASA asked legislators to approve $50,000 separation incentives as part of the agency's 1997 appropriation. Agency officials predict layoffs will be necessary without such buyouts.
The Senate version of NASA's appropriation and authorization bills already would permit $25,000 buyouts. But the agency fears that's too small a sweetener to attract NASA professionals whose average salary and benefits package is close to $80,000 a year.
There are about 40 senior executives at NASA headquarters in Washington who soon may be looking for buyouts. They hold jobs considered "excess" in a headquarters downsizing effort. NASA will move the executives to SES jobs open in its field centers. That may be little comfort, since the centers are downsizing, as well.
"We're not going to send somebody to something that's not a real job," says Stan Kask, director of management systems in NASA's human resources office. "But we can't predict what happens two or three years into the future."
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