There is no end in how bad issues can get. Never met a Lockheed manager willing to admit they were wrong.
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You know I had always wondered what happened to that volunteer program about sending care packages to the troops. This explains a lot, and when I did a little more googling on it, HOLY CROW!!!!
If anything, you sold that one short. What a wild ride of a story that one is.
I learned all I needed to know about this company when the company canceled its “Letters to the Troops” program.
Most of you may not remember it, but it was a program designed to set up a “pen pal” like program between LM employees and troops serving in Afghanistan or Iraq during the mid to late 00s. Care packages, letters of encouragement, that kind of thing. It was around for a while (and popular with LM employees), and then suddenly disappeared. No warning, no explanations; troops as well as LM employees were left bewildered as to what happened.
Here’s what happened: one of the Lockheed VPs thought the program would be an awesome way to “meet” the troops, and by “meet” I mean misuse company funds and program funds to turn the whole thing into her personal erotica project. This VP used funds from the program to buy s-x toys and send them to soldiers in Iraq, bought a laptop for one particular solider, and reserved expensive hotel rooms to meet military men after they returned home. THEN used corporate funds to arrange the travel so she could meet up with them.
Did someone blow the whistle on this VP? You betcha! They went straight to the Employee Ethics Hotline. The ANONYMOUS Employee Ethics Hotline. The same anonymous employee ethics hotline that promptly contacted HR, then worked with HR to let the VP know about the allegation (making sure she had a chance to cover her tracks). Then they let her know who made the complaint (“anonymous”, eh?). Even went so far as to assist in covering things up.
Thankfully, as with most thing with LM’s HR, it was a half-baked job. But they made sure to put their heads in the found as the employee who blew the whistle went through about a year or so or direct harassment and retaliation from the offending VP, eventually forcing the employee from their job.
Was their a lawsuit? Yep. Here’s one of many links regarding it: https://www.courthousenews.com/lockheed-martin-retaliated-10th-circuit-says/?amp=1
If you find the document with the presiding judge’s opinion, it’s quite the read. He calls LM on the carpet for protecting their leadership at the expense of doing what’s right, and single-handedly destroying any trust any employee might have of reporting wrongdoing in the future.
A company that protects the person who’s stealing from them and misusing resources (not to mention the negative PR they’re creating), and throws the employee doing the right thing under the bus? No thank you.
So yes, if someone asks me whether or not Lockheed is a good company, I just refer to this case. Based on some of the more recent cases that LM has lost recently, it doesn’t look like anything’s changed.
FYI: if you want more information, the case was Andrea Brown v. Lockheed Martin
The next time this manager; it's a stretch calling her a manager, goes shopping at Northpark or Nordstroms Galleria, take some pictures when she is there during work hours with a time and date stamp, Then tape the pictures to the columns in the office at Lockheed for all to see. My prior Lockheed manager was doing the same thing about two days per week most weeks. She would go to Northpark for lunch and shopping with her gal pals from other Lockheed groups. She was overheard telling her little trooper pals they would all hit the spa first. Never came back to work after she left.
This sure sounds like none other than Missiles and Fire Control, Grand Prairie, Texas where the leadership can best be defined as grossly incompetent and unaccountable at all levels.
Several of us has the delight to work for a manager who routinely engaged in labor mischarging and falsifying timecards so she could attend her manicures, pedicures, lash extension appointments, waxing sessions, weekly in-person (Nordstroms Galleria and Northpark) shopping escapades to return the goods she bought the week before -only to make more purchases. This was a weekly thing. Several of us shared this with HR as people got fed up and started leaving or going to other areas. HR did an "investigation" which went nowhere. The Manager is still in her position (on a different program) but still doing the exact same activities that she's been doing for years. There is NO Lockheed Martin leadership to take out the trash and clean-out bad employees because there are not enough new employees to back fill the attrition caused by the defective manager in the first place.
That's why I left. Their HR is really bad...they don't hire good management, don't promote competent people, and don't invest in training..good old boys network.
Omnipotent.
It’s funny you post this, because I remember that attitude on one of our programs ended up earning us a 0% award fee.
Literally the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing happening. True to form, company replaced leadership, but it was the rank-and-file who actually righted the ship and got things back on track.
The leadership that got replaced? Within a year, they were all back in leadership positions or had been promoted to positions with greater authority.
It’s a bit surreal to have witnessed.