Free Republic

More than 270 workers are set to lose their jobs at the award-winning chef's restaurants this month due to the coronavirus. CHICAGO, IL — Hundreds of workers at Iron Chef Stephanie Izard's restaurants in Chicago are set to lose their jobs later this month. The companies that operate Izard's Girl & The Goat, Duck Duck Goat and Little Goat Diner notified Illinois officials in July that each plan to lay off dozens of restaurant workers starting Sept. 20. According to notices filed with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, 96 employees at Little Goat Diner face permanent layoffs,...

H.C. Starck Inc. is laying off 67 employees at its manufacturing facility at 1250 E. 222nd St. in Euclid. The company is owned by German.-based H.C. Starck Group, a supplier of technology metals and advanced chemicals. It will lay off the employees — most of whom hold manufacturing positions — starting Jan. 21, 2013, and extending through Sept. 30, 2013, according to a notice filed today with the state under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. (You can read the notice here.) Affected employees are not represented by unions and will not be offered bumping rights, the notice...

<p>ATKINS, Va. (AP) - Cabinet maker Merillat is laying off 280 employees at two manufacturing plants in southwest Virginia.</p> <p>Officials for parent company Masco Cabinetry confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to close two facilities that make doors and panels for cabinets in Atkins in mid-January.</p>

The CEO-in-waiting of the defense contractor who declined to issue WARN Act layoff notices on the urging of the Obama administration — sequestration-related notices mandated by law that would have gone out just before the election — has resigned, citing an affair. Christopher E. Kubasik, 51, today resigned from his role as vice chairman, president and chief operating officer (COO), effective immediately, Lockheed Martin announced. Kubasik was set to become CEO in January. He “resigned after an ethics investigation confirmed that he had a close personal relationship with a subordinate employee. His actions violated the company’s Code of Ethics and...

The CEO-in-waiting of the defense contractor who declined to issue WARN Act layoff notices on the urging of the Obama administration — sequestration-related notices mandated by law that would have gone out just before the election — has resigned, citing an affair. Christopher E. Kubasik, 51, today resigned from his role as vice chairman, president and chief operating officer (COO), effective immediately, Lockheed Martin announced. Kubasik was set to become CEO in January. He “resigned after an ethics investigation confirmed that he had a close personal relationship with a subordinate employee. His actions violated the company’s Code of Ethics and...

Want to violate the law? Yes! Enjoy paying for advice from your attorney? NO! Then Follow the Administration's advice and just say Yes! It's no Big F***** Big deal and Somebody Else will pay. Maybe. A legal blog that I follow has summarized and commented on the Obama Administration's "legal" advice that there is no need to comply with the WARN Act requirement that companies with more than 100 employees to give written notice of a facility closing or mass layoff to the affected employees (and certain governmental offices) at least 60 days prior to the facility closing or layoff....

In case you missed it over the weekend, the Obama administration’s Friday afternoon document drop was a memo from the Department of Labor telling defense contractors not to provide legally-required notice to thousands of employees that they are about to be laid off, if automatic spending cuts agreed to by the President and the Congress take effect. Translation: President Obama wants to prevent thousands of employees, especially in swing-state Virginia, from being told that they are going to be laid off due to Department of Defense funding cuts. Because of the timing of the cuts, those notices would have been...

MARIETTA — Lockheed Martin, which has about 8,000 employees in Marietta, announced Monday that it would not send out notices of possible layoffs to its employees right before Election Day. The move follows advisories from the Department of Defense and the federal Office of Management and Budget “indicating that DOD anticipates no contract actions on or about 2 January, 2013, and that any action to adjust funding levels on contracts as a result of sequestration would likely not occur for several months after 2 Jan,” a Lockheed spokeswoman in Bethesda, Md., said. The Budget Control Act of 2011 created a...

Corruption: Our lawless president tells defense contractors they can break the law requiring politically inconvenient layoff notices caused by sequestration defense cuts, and the taxpayers will pay their legal bills. When President Obama took the oath of office, he swore to uphold the Constitution and see that the laws of the United States were faithfully executed. He lied, and that lie was exposed in the administration's weekly document dump last Friday. It included a memo from the Department of Labor telling defense contractors not to obey the law and that, if they don't, U.S. taxpayers will foot their legal bills...

In an effort to make the economy look a little rosier than it is, the Obama administration is basically coercing defense contractors so as to prevent news of layoffs hitting voters before the election. With sequestration about to result in some major cuts to the defense budget, contractors will lose government business -- and that means, employees will lose jobs. But to prevent poor numbers ahead of the November election, the Obama administration has made it very, well, fiscally unwise for companies to issue layoff notices too early. The Labor Department issued guidance in July saying it would be “inappropriate”...

Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors backed down from issuing layoff notices to employees on Monday after the Obama administration promised to pick up the tab for severance costs resulting from sequestration. The news provided welcome relief for President Obama, who faced the prospect of mass layoff notices in battleground states just days before the election, and outraged Republicans, who accused the administration of bending the law to hide job losses from the public. The White House issued guidance on Friday that said the government would cover the costs if contracts are canceled and layoffs occur due to the automatic...

Corruption: Our lawless president tells defense contractors they can break the law requiring politically inconvenient layoff notices caused by sequestration defense cuts, and the taxpayers will pay their legal bills. When President Obama took the oath of office, he swore to uphold the Constitution and see that the laws of the United States were faithfully executed. He lied, and that lie was exposed in the administration's weekly document dump last Friday. It included a memo from the Department of Labor telling defense contractors not to obey the law and that, if they don't, U.S. taxpayers will foot their legal bills...

Furious over the White House telling defense companies to ignore federal law requiring them to warn employees of possible layoffs from pending defense cuts, two key Republicans are demanding to know the legal rationale behind the guidance. Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire fired off a letter Monday night to Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, questioning the agency’s legal authority to make the promises, which they said could put taxpayers on the hook for “billions of dollars.” Mr. Zients‘ letter told private companies not only that they didn’t...

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election. Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way...

It's difficult to understate the importance of Lockheed Martin's latest announcement on the race for the White House: the defense contractor said on Monday it will not be issuing employee layoff notices to 123,000 workers on Nov. 2—just four days before the presidential election. Amidst all of the super PACs and campaign ads, the threat of telling a sizable chunk of voters in key areas of the country that they could lose their jobs if the election didn't go Lockheed's way was one of the most potent examples of corporate electioneering. But the layoff threat was largely unreported outside of...

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...

Despite administration warnings that notices related to sequestration were unnecessary, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are continuing their preparations. Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are going forward with plans to issue layoff notices to thousands of employees due to looming defense cuts under sequestration, despite administration claims that such warnings are unnecessary. U.S. defense companies planned to start handing out pink slips in November under federal mandates outlined in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, due to the anticipated $500 billion automatic cut to defense coffers are set to go in place in January. But administration...

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama is trying to prevent thousands of layoff notices from going out a few days before the November election, Sen. Jame Inhofe (R-Okla.) said on Tuesday. Obama's Labor Department on Monday issued "guidance" to the states, telling them that a federal law requiring advance notice of mass layoffs does not apply to the layoffs that may occur in January as a result of automatic budget cuts known as "sequestration." Inhofe, appearing on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, said President Obama, through his Labor Department, "is trying to intimidate businesses, companies, corporations -- not just defense contractors --...