Stacking the deck??

[Skul]

Can you emagine if this had happened during GWB's second election campaign?

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/080212-620795-skip-pink-slips-defense-contractors-told.htm?ven=outbraincp,OutBrainCP

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. Labor Dept. Waives 60-Day Notice To Help Obama Win
Fri, Aug 03 2012 00:00:00 E A14_ISSUES


 Posted 08/02/2012 06:48 PM ET

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inShare.Politics: An administration that doesn't want layoff notices required by law going out days before the November election is telling defense contractors they don't have to send them for the cuts required by sequestration.

As the heads of major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, EADS North America, Pratt & Whitney and Williams-Pyro testified recently before the House Armed Services Committee, they are bound by law to give employees 60 days' notice if their jobs are going to be terminated as a result of sequestration cuts scheduled for Jan. 2.

Federal law under the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice) Act required employers to give workers a minimum of 60 days notice before potential mass layoffs.

That means layoff warning notices could go out to hundreds of thousands of workers just days before the presidential election, a prospect President Obama and his administration do not relish.

Some $500 billion in defense-spending reductions are scheduled to kick in beginning Jan. 2.

These cuts come on top of $487 billion in Defense Department cuts recently approved and threaten to not only to put our national security in jeopardy but also gut the skilled workforce in the aerospace industry.

Robert Stevens, chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, told lawmakers that his company alone is looking at laying off roughly 10,000 employees from its 120,000 workforce.

The layoffs would be the result of cuts to its largest programs, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship.

Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast To avoid the electoral consequences of these cuts, the Department of Labor (DOL) is informing defense contractors that since sequestration hasn't actually happened yet, and some in Congress are trying to find ways around it, it might be nice if they didn't obey federal law and send out the pink slips just this once.

Otherwise, outraged voters might give President Obama a pink slip a few days later.

The DOL has issued guidelines that acknowledge it is "currently known that sequestration may occur, it is also known that efforts are being made to avoid sequestration." So, Labor argues, the "WARN Act notice to employees of Federal contractors, including in the defense industry, is not required 60 days in advance of January 2, 2013, and would be inappropriate, given the lack of certainty about how the budget cuts will be implemented and the possibility that the sequester will be avoided before January."

What is "inappropriate" is the Department of Labor playing election year political games to save the boss' political skin.

[Ausonius]

Can you imagine if this had happened during GWB's second election campaign?

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/080212-620795-skip-pink-slips-defense-contractors-told.htm?ven=outbraincp,OutBrainCP

You are quite right: if Dubya had tried this, it would be front page news for days!

But now...(chirping crickets)

The conspiratorial silence on this story - note that it is almost a month old - tells you exactly what is wrong with the MSM in the country, and why the networks are losing ever more credibility.  It is also why the BIG BRObama regime is so shameless in its manipulation of the government to retain its power.

Billy Jeff "I can't-keep-my-barn-door-closed" Clinton was once quoted that to win an election, he would do "whatever it takes."  If that meant fraud, then you committed fraud.

Because Leftists, since they are Nietzscheans at heart, have gone beyond Good and Evil.

[Karin]

We did discuss this here at the time (early August).  I remember that both Dumbass Tanker and I agreed that we would never take the word of some bureaucratic government agency over the letter of the law.  You can get yourself in a shitload of trouble.  Does the Labor Dept have the legal authority to override legistlation at its whim?   At any rate, I think Lockheed would go ahead and send those slips out.  Law's the law. 

I'm a stockholder, wonder if they would reply to me if I asked?   

[Karin]

From Commentary Magazine:

But John Irving, a former National Labor Relations Board counsel who helped shape some provisions of the WARN Act, said he would tell major defense contractors to think twice about disregarding the WARN Act.

It is unlikely that the DOL guidance would hold up in court if a terminated worker sued his employer for not giving proper notice, Irving said.

In other words, defense contractors cannot fall back on the Department of Labor memo if the federal government lurches off the fiscal cliff and a laid-off employee had not received a pink slip by early November.

“It strikes me that the guidance is so far off the mark that you wonder why it’s being issued, and it’s not a regulation — it’s a sort of statement of opinion, which is coming out because of what could be the consequence,” Irving said. “It’s trying to blunt that and head it off in a way makes it look like no notice is not necessary when it may be.”

Obama’s Department of Labor must realize it’s asking defense contractors to put themselves at legal risk by asking them to ignore the law. The DOL doesn’t enforce the WARN Act; it’s enforced solely through legal challenges by employees. President Obama knows this all too well, since he personally supported stricter federal enforcement mechanisms for the WARN Act during his time in the senate.

Link to Commentary

There is very little new in the Nadine Machine results.  I think after the initial uproar, they let it fade away. 

Aren't you sick of king zero picking and choosing which laws he likes, and when?  I can't believe this is happening in our country. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

Right you are, Karin.  Actually this BS 'Waiver' does not mean the employer can't send the notices...

[obumazombie]

By executive fiat. The libs squealed like stuffed pigs when they were accusing Bush of what owebuma is ACTUALLY doing now.

[thundley4]

Right you are, Karin.  Actually this BS 'Waiver' does not mean the employer can't send the notices...

Doesn't the WARN Act only make a minimum of 60 days be required?  Couldn't the companies out of some perverse sense of not liking to be threatened by Obamao send out the notices earlier?

[DumbAss Tanker]

Doesn't the WARN Act only make a minimum of 60 days be required?  Couldn't the companies out of some perverse sense of not liking to be threatened by Obamao send out the notices earlier?

Indeed they could.

[BlueStateSaint]

Indeed they could.

Hopefully, they would.