Now why would the Department of Labor do that?

Labor Dept. Waives 60-Day Notice To Help Obama Win

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.

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

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.

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.

It's the law and employees have the right to know what is about to hit them, not have the administration whistle past an economic graveyard of its own making.

Interestingly, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., points out, the DOL had previously argued that it has "no administrative or enforcement responsibility under (the WARN Act)" and "cannot provide specific advice or guidance with respect to individual situations."

Well, it just did, and the threat to Obama's re-election chances by mass defense layoffs is the reason.

There are a lot of voters in Northern Virginia, a critical swing state, who work for defense contractors, and cuts caused by sequestration will affect them and the future of their families.

Nationwide, Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University's Center of Regional Analysis, estimates the across-the-board reduction could cost the country 2.14 million jobs and increase unemployment by as much as 1.5 percentage points.

"Sequestration is currently the law of the land, and our nation's workers have a right to know how these sequestration cuts which begin in January may impact them," Sen. McCain noted.

They deserve to know when they're about to lose their jobs, and that President Obama did it for them. So do the voters.