Obama urging defense contractors ‘to disobey the law’ by not warning of layoffs

On Monday, the Department of Labor sent a letter to all state workforce agencies, administrators and liaisons, hoping to deter defense contractors from notifying employees of diminishing government funding, and urging them to forget about telling employees about the potential for massive layoffs “right before Election Day.”

As lawmakers on Capitol Hill work to deliver a solution to a looming deadline that could “sequester” billions from the defense budget, the Obama administration is advising defense contractors to forget about the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act – ensuring employers that the standards in the law need not apply to them.

Post continues on DailyCaller.com : http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/01/inhofe-obama-urging-defense... Under the WARN Act, passed in 1988, employers are required to give their employees a minimum of 60 days notice – delivering pink slips to employees by November 2 at the latest, a mere four days before the election.

However, GOP lawmakers warn the administration is leading defense companies into the lion’s den for lawsuits from employers, as it is mandatory for contractors to notify employees of the potential for layoffs.

“The president got caught trying to get companies to violate the law,” Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma told TheDC.

Under section 3 of the act, an employer shall not order a plant closing or massive layoff until the end of a 60 day period after the employer services written notice of such order.

“He’s trying to avoid taking the responsibility for losing hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. Because the cuts come on the heels of the election, the president stands to lose the thousands of voters who could be jobless because of the defense cuts – particularly in swing states like Virginia and Florida.
If a sequestration does occur, companies like Lockheed Martin would have to lay off more than 100,000 jobs, with a large majority coming from Virginia. Yet the administration is advising the companies to ignore the WARN Act, alleging it doesn’t apply to them.

“This thing that came from the Labor Department yesterday is an insult to the intelligence to the corporate world. They know if they don’t comply with the law they’re going to open themselves up to lawsuits.”



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