Posted on 09/29/2012 5:12:45 AM PDT by SE Mom
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The White House on Friday told government contractors worried about fiscal cliff spending cuts to hold off on warning employees about possible layoffs.
The government said it would cover legal costs if contractors are forced to slash their payrolls because of the looming $109 billion in automatic cuts next year and are alleged to have violated the WARN Act.
....
Defense contractors in particular have warned for months that the upcoming sequester would cost jobs in their industry. And Lockheed Martin's CEO has said publicly he may be forced to issue notice this fall of possible layoffs in 2013.
If other contractors follow suit, there could be a rash of layoff notices spooking employees right before Election Day.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
” The government said it would cover legal costs”
Suuuuuure it will.
The government said it would cover legal costs if contractors are forced to slash their payrolls because of the looming $109 billion in automatic cuts next year and are alleged to have violated the WARN Act. ....
Not that anyone in the MSM cares about the law or facts now-a-days.....
It seems this could be an issue for Romney. It shows Obama attempting to bribe private businesses to keep the pink slips on hold until after November ..bonus points for the utter dysfunction and irresponsibility of government/Congress.
It’s because of the video.
We are in the hands of criminals.
Suuuuuure it will."
Yes, good luck in collecting. These companies are damned if they do and damned if they don't. This is classic fascism with the government calling all of the shots and deciding that the law means whatever the government wants. Where is Congress (rhetorical question)?
The procedure is to put out the 60 day notices and ignore the White House.
If there is a problemlater, issue contracts to remedy the problem
Any contractor who follows this blatantly illegal directive from this criminal administration should be held in disdain AND REMEMBERED.
Obama is an illegal president who has defied more laws than any president. Now he asks corporate America to save his skinny buns for political reasons, by ignoring another law? Obama’s Attorney General would be the first in line to bust any corporation Obama disagrees with. All US businesses will be safer to follow the law to the letter!
Sounds like an offer to bribe a government contractor with government money in an attempt to influence the election. I would be interested in how many laws are broken by this.
Please raise this in the Debates, Romney. Obama fails on every front here: this is illegal, immoral (maybe a crazy law, but it’s a law, so follow it and allow people to recover), and a threat to national securuty. Defense cuts are needed, but they ARE being done thoughtlessly, leaving potential holes in our defense.
Suuuuuure it will...
Let me assure you, the contractors know what’s going on even if they don’t officially hear it.
"Gee....I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t it blatently illegal for the Government to proactively offer to cover legal costs to encourage company to violate the law?
Not that anyone in the MSM cares about the law or facts now-a-days.....
And last week the Air Force announced the overseas out sourcing of Phase Maintenance of F-15s and F-16s to a subdivision of Korean Air Lines in South Korea. More jobs Americans used to do.
Dear leader, those of us in the industry aren't stupid and we know there is not such things as Obama phones. I won't be happy until this bum is out of a job and picking up beer cans on the side of the road to pay for his hamburgers
If I was running a large corporation doing business with the Federal Government I would come back to these people with a simple proposition: “Give me written and signed guidance on official letterhead that you are instructing me to violate Federal Law. Until then I will comply, to the best of my abilities, with published federal Law as you should.”
Notice my use of “should” above. It is a statement that the faceless political appointees and their supporting “professional” bureaucrats view Federal Laws as optional suggestions.
Missile defense agency already cutting. I’ve got a buddy that is a contractor there, well, was. He just found out earlier this week that his last day is next Friday. He and a couple dozen others. And so it begins. You think he or any of his fellow newly unemployed are voting for hussein? Ha!
So the WH has just publicly requested the Defense Industry violate the Warn law.
But that wasn’t enough, no....the WH has also publicly announced they will use taxpayer funds to pay the legal fees for them to violate the Warn law.
And the only reason for this is to avoid bad pr before the election.
Another scandal that would have taken down any other president - but this one.
This is not the first time this President has decided not to enforce a law that he didn’t like - in direct contradiction to to oath he took! Can someone explain to me how this isn’t an impeachable offense?
This is the carrot...
The stick will be that companies not complying with the wishes of the administration will be frozen out of government contracts.
I’m in defense work, and I know the corporate weenies will cave.
Exactly. We’ve all known about this for months- I posted the piece because the errr, uhmmm, ahhh, chickens are coming home to roost and it seems a good time to start reminding ourselves and EVERYONE WE KNOW that this is happening- not just the layoffs themselves- but the administrations’ attempt to bribe PRIVATE BUSINESSES into staying mum on it until AFTER November.
I think Romney needs to get on this, STAT.
Interesting perspective on the whole hussein administration. The rules don’t apply to them. When given a choice, as they have right now, where they could follow the law they choose not to. They would rather break the law and fight a legal battle than simply oh, follow the law like they swore an oath to uphold. Bunch of lying, self-serving POS...
it’s been happening in my neck of the woods too.
The sad thing is...people who were O fans before all this?
Yeah....that hasn’t changed.
Unbelievable. They can’t be reasoned with.
The "remembered" part is problematic. Most of these, especially the small ones, contract exclusively to the government. The big ones, though, like Accenture, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, L3, etc., will hopefully know better.
Where there is no enforcement of the law, why should the Executive stay within the boundaries of the Constitution? the other two branches of our government have failed us.
already started...BIG FLATS, N.Y. (AP) — Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., citing declining military budgets and a tough economy, said it will close its plant in upstate New York and eliminate all 570 jobs.
Employees at the 5-year-old facility, which has seen its ranks dwindle from a peak of 1,300, were told Monday that the plant would close as of Dec. 31 and its work transitioned to Sikorsky's West Palm Beach, Fla., facility.
Of course their first inclination is to cave- it’s also an indictment on the lost character of FREE ENTERPRISE as much as on the corrupt government. The government is holding business hostage (again)...and we know this is a tenet of fascism.
Let everyone see what’s really going on here.
Folks, every time I think the Obammunists couldn’t possibly be more abusive and more contemptuous of we the taxpayers and citizens and the rule of law, they prove me wrong. Every time I think nothing they do will astonish me, I’m astonished. In this case, they are so desperate to maintain power that they are encouraging government contractors to break Federal law and have the taxpayers pay their fines!
I really don’t know why I’m astonished any more. The Obammunists are essentially national social fascists and this sort of intimidation is a perfect example. (BTW, for those of you who may be unclear, fascism is an economic system in which most of the means of production and property in general is privately held, but the government is so highly regulative and intimidating at every level, that the private owners do the bidding of the government at the minutest level, motivated primarily by fear and in some cases, greed, a la crony capitalism.)
The “remembered” part is problematic. Most of these, especially the small ones, contract exclusively to the government. The big ones, though, like Accenture, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, L3, etc., will hopefully know better.
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Well these contracting corporations need to be aware that if they don’t comply with the law they could eventually face lawsuits from some employees or employee groups. If I was on a jury hearing such a civil case, I would VERY MUCH take into account any corporate complicity with lawless government when it came to deciding degree of fault and amount of damages. I’m sure there would be numerous others like me — the punitive damages awarded could be HUGE. This is something the senior executives of these contractors need to keep in mind as they decide whether to comply with the law or to be complicit with the lawless Obama administration.
“It seems this could be an issue for Romney. It shows Obama attempting to bribe private businesses to keep the pink slips on hold until after November ..bonus points for the utter dysfunction and irresponsibility of government/Congress.”
Yep. The ad just makes itself. A superpac needs to make this add on Monday and have it plastered on the airwaves by Tuesday.
Point well taken. Glad I’m just a cog.
This sort of gov’t indirect control of so-called “private” business was at the heart of the Italian Fascist and German National Socialist systems.
Update with more info from The Hill:
But the Friday guidance from the Office of Management and Budget raised the stakes in the dispute, telling contractors that they would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration — but only if the contractors follow the Labor guidance.
The guidance said that if plant closings or mass layoffs occur under sequestration, then “employee compensation costs for [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification] WARN act liability as determined by a court” would be paid for covered by the contracting federal agency.
Senate Republicans, who accused the White House of trying to hide job losses after the first guidance, said Friday that the new OMB statement “puts politics ahead of American workers.”
“The Obama Administration is cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis,” Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said in a statement. “The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and move forward with the layoff notices.”
The fight over WARN Act notices began in June when Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens said his company might send the notices to all 123,000 of its employees.
Exactly Right. I believe it is covered in Federal Law
18 USC § 4 - MISPRISION OF FELONY—Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Of course this would also cover the acts of the Administration felons in Fast and Furious. But who’s counting violations of Federal Statutes any more.
Many liberal companies have been laying off like crazy but doing so in small amounts to avoid the laws that require public notification. Boeing, for instance, has been laying off groups of 30 or so every few weeks.
And more on this over at Hot Air:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/29/obama-administration-tries-to-block-sequester-layoff-notices/
Looks as though this message is going to start getting some attention...
I’m in defense work, and I know the corporate weenies will cave.
I was a contractor for decades. The weenies better watch out their former employees may decide that it isn’t worth working for them anymore. Then where will they be? Thousands of Man-centuries of lost knowledge that they won’t be able to get back.
And as for all of those manuals on procedures that have been written to prevent the loss of the knowledge goes. What makes the weenies think that all of it went down on paper?
Here’s the link to the PDF at The White House OMB that says they will cover legal fees etc.
I think we should call it The Bribery Memo..
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2012/m-12-19.pdf
I hope they have that in writing, not on a teleprompter.
I think America may be too far gone to save.
“Sounds like an offer to bribe a government contractor with government money in an attempt to influence the election.”
At a minimum, it is using/offering federal funds in the furtherance of a crime. Would a jury let a company off of law suits from its employees with the defense that, ‘they’ told us it was ok to not follow the law.
They do so at their own peril, so just follow the damned law!
Yes.
Too late. Already laid off. :-s
I’ll do fine, but this is my second lay-off in four years. None in my previous 20 years of employment. I’m trying to figure out why...
“I’ll do fine, but this is my second lay-off in four years. None in my previous 20 years of employment. I’m trying to figure out why...”
The statistics say you are not alone.
In the last four years the ‘Initial unemployment’ numbers released weekly indicate around 50% of the overall workforce would have been laid. 50% is an incredible number. We know that the numbers must include a great number of ‘repeat layoffs’.
Its not you. Its the economy. And there must a few million in the same situation of being laid off multiple times in this ‘recession’.
the week after the election is going to tumultuous on a scale that will make us think of october of 2008 as “the good old days”.
obama is kicking every decision that is even slightly controversial past the election. these things will stack up, and they will have dire consequences.
So, the government has its own money?
And if they try to raise our taxes to pay for this, we can treat it as armed robbery, and shoot the enforcers down like dogs?
PINK SLIPS FROM A PINK PRESIDENT. HOW APPROPRIATE!
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