Obama’s answer to the WARN Act?

Good day all. I saw this yesterday but was to busy to deal with it. As you should be aware, thanks to the sequestration rules that will hit soon, there will be massive cuts to the defense department. Because of this, the defense contractors, (The companies that make the beans and bullets), will have to lay off workers.

Because of the size and numbers of people that will lose their jobs, the WARN Act ((Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act)) will kick in. This law was passed so that companies that see layoffs coming can inform their workers and give them time to prepare for their job losses. Since these notices will be going out ahead of the election, those affected might decide to take it out on Obama.

So what is Obama’s answer to this? Simple really. He’s telling the companies that will be affected to essentially ignore the law. Here are some of the details from the National Journal:

The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.

That alone should tell you just how bad and deep these cuts will be.

Some defense companies—including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America—have said they expect to send notices to their employees 60 days before sequestration takes effect to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advance warning to workers deemed reasonably likely to lose their jobs.

None of these companies want to do this. Prior to the passage of the WARN Act, companies would wait until the last minute and then send in the HR drones to announce the layoffs. The reason they would wait was to keep the stock prices from tanking.

Companies appeared undeterred by a July 30 guidance from the Labor Department, which said issuing such notices would be inappropriate, due to the possibility that sequestration may be averted. The Labor Department also said companies do not have enough information about how the cuts might be implemented to determine which workers or specific programs could be affected should Congress fail to reach a compromise to reduce the deficit, triggering $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, half from defense, half non-defense. For 2013, that would amount to $109 billion in spending cuts

I recall that bit of news last summer. These companies really had no choice but to start the process of layoffs and plant closures. You can’t just shut a factory down. It needs to be essentially mothballed, with all the machines prepared for long term storage.

However, when these companies said they were going to proceed with the WARN notices, the Obama administration panicked. The economy is horrible right now, and if tens of thousands of people should lose their jobs right before the election, it would make King Putt look bad. So what did the SCoaMF’s administration do? Did they try to work with congress to stop the sequestrations? Umm, no.

So the Office of Management and Budget went a step further in guidance issued late Friday afternoon (.pdf). If an agency terminates or modifies a contract, and the contractor must close a plant or lay off workers en masse, the company could treat employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability, attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs as allowable costs to be covered by the contracting agency—so long as the contractor has followed a course of action consistent with the Labor Department’s guidance. The legal fees would be covered regardless of the outcome of the litigation, according to the OMB guidance issued by Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management, and Joseph Jordan, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.

“This guidance does not alter existing rights, responsibilities, obligations, or limitations under individual contract provisions or the governing cost principles set forth in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and other applicable law,” said the guidance addressed to the chief financial officers and senior procurement executives of departments and agencies. “Thus, agencies may treat as allowable other costs potentially associated with sequestration, including WARN Act-related costs arising under circumstances not specified in this guidance, based on the usual cost principles of allocability, allowability, and reasonableness as set forth in the FAR.”

In other words, “Lie to your employees and don’t issue the warnings as required by law. We will protect you after the election.” Considering the past history of this administration, any company that follows this guidance is going to get shafted big time if Obama wins. The Democrat party has always claimed to “Be for the working man!” How does screwing over these working people, a lot of whom are Union members, show that they care? The answer is, they don’t. As far as the Democrats are concerned, all that matters is winning at any cost, and the laws be damned. Think I’m overreacting?

Democrats, including House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith ((Rep. Adam Smith)), D-Wash., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye ((Daniel Ken “Dan” Inouye)), D-Hawaii, have also said there is no reason to needlessly alarm hundreds of thousands of workers.

Lets see now, In Smith’s state we have Boeing, one of the largest aircraft manufactures in the country. They build things like the F/A-18 Hornet ((McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet)), and the F-15 Eagle ((McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle)), as well as many spare parts, upgrades and other things the military needs to blow up the enemy. In Hawaii we have Pearl Harbor. That employs thousands of civilian workers to help repair and maintain the ships, planes and other equipment used by the military. If the companies that are contracted to perform those services aren’t going to get paid, then they have no choice but to let their workers go. You would think these two would be at the forefront of preventing the defense cuts or at least letting their constituents know they are going to be out of work soon. You would be wrong. So who is in favor of letting them know?

Many Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham ((Lindsey Olin Graham)), R-S.C., have said that they hoped constituent concern resulting from the notices would spur compromise on Capitol Hill.

What a silly hope. The Democrats don’t want to support the military. In fact, they would just as soon shut the defense department down and transfer all that money to their favorite programs, like free phones for Obama supporters. As I’ve said repeatedly, all the Democrats care about is absolute power and they will do anything to maintain it, including violating the very laws they pass.

They all need to go.

Remember in November!

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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