[QUOTE=elucidator]
The Pubbies offers the same justification that you do, that they are legally compelled to do so. The administration pretends to take them at their word, and assures them that prosecutorial discretion will ensure that no such consequences are likely.
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And you know this how, exactly? Are you saying that there will be no cuts, automatic or otherwise? That a compromise on the budget will be reached? How will the administration ensure this, since it’s up to the Congress to decide?
Do you really think that even if there is a nine percent cut in government spending (which hasn’t even happened yet) that it will cause Lockheed to go out of business before the end of the year and put their entire workforce out of business? Do you honestly think that’s going to happen?
Because that’s the only scenario where Lockheed is required to give layoff warnings. Anything else is just grandstanding.
“You’re don’t like unpaid overtime? Well, we might lay you off.”
“You’re asking for a raise? Well, we might lay you off.”
“You’re thinking about forming a union? Well, we might lay you off.”
“Obama might get re-elected? Well, we might lay you off.”
(sigh) First, it would have to be determined that the layoff notices were compelled by circumstances that are unambiguous. A clear and present circumstance, not just some possibility. The Pubbies in this are pretending that the current situation meets that standard, but that is open to interpretation, no? Notice the actions of Lockheed, referenced above.
The Obama admin knows this, as well as the people who are pretending they don’t. If there were legal sanctions in play, their defense would be ready-made, and perfectly valid. In essence, the admin response is "Oh, come off it! OK, look, we’ll flat out tell you it won’t happen, so if you have to go to court, it will be pretty fucking brief, what with you showing the Judge what we said and him saying ‘Dismissed’ "
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Because that’s the only scenario where Lockheed is required to give layoff warnings. Anything else is just grandstanding.
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No, you are wrong. A contractor is required to give notice if they have to lay off workers on a contract for the government (60 days prior if they know ahead of time that they will have to lay them off, IIRC), not only if they are going out of business.
And as we’ve seen, contracts aren’t suddenly going to be thrown out the window in 60 days. This does not remotely rise to the level of knowing that they’re going to have to lay workers off.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
And as we’ve seen, contracts aren’t suddenly going to be thrown out the window in 60 days. This does not remotely rise to the level of knowing that they’re going to have to lay workers off.
[/QUOTE]
If a compromise isn’t reached then my understanding is that there will be automatic cuts to the Defense budget. What cuts? Who knows? But if there ARE cuts, then you can be sure that some non-zero number of people working for contractors who do work for the Defense Department WILL be laid off. Is that or is that not true? If it IS true, then said contractors are obligated to give a warning that this may transpire. Not to say that it WILL happen, for sure, but that it might happen. Again, is that or is that not true?
Is this being used for political purposes? Absolutely the Republicans are using this, and not just for the Presidential elections, which everyone seems to be narrowly focused on. I’d say that to the Republicans this is a bonus if it helps Romney…what they REALLY want to do is apply pressure on the Democrats when this all comes to a head, so that the Dems will be forced to compromise to avoid those automatic cuts that could (probably would) lead to layoffs.
But whether or not it’s political doesn’t detract from the fact that, afaik, contractors are obligated to send out warnings if layoffs are a possibility at least 60 days in advance, and were I a betting man and given the lack of compromise that created this mess, that there will be automatic cuts…and that will mean layoffs. Which means they would have been obligated to send out warnings that it could happen. They aren’t obligated now, since the Administration (for, again, obviously political reasons) has let them off the hook.
I understand that. But Lockheed was planning to hand out layoff warnings to all 123,000 of its employees. The only reason why Lockheed would be laying off its entire workforce was if it was going out of business. So as it’s not likely Lockheed will be closing in the next 60 days, these warnings are bogus.
Oh, you are making your case on what the law actually requires. So riddle me this: let’s say that a company knows that a big contract is up for renewal on January 3. If the contract isn’t renewed, the factory will shut down on February 3. At what date does the company have to notify the workers about the risk to their jobs?
Sure, it’s politically motivated after all. I get that as well. However, from LM’s perspective, there is at least a grain of truth sending the notices out to a large number of employees (I agree that ALL employees is over the top), since depending on what contracts are cut it could affect not only the contractors directly on those contracts but overhead personnel and costs too. That would affect the folks making or doing whatever is on a give contract, AND all of the support and overhead personnel (as well as possibly R&D types if it really effects LMs budget). And they just wouldn’t know what the over all effect would be until they knew to what extent their own contracts would be impacted.
From my perspective (as a former government contractor and now a government worker), I can see both sides of this. And, from my perspective it’s slimy politics happening from both parties on this one. You are absolutely right that LM and others are playing this up for political reasons. And the WH and the Dems are downplaying it…for political reasons. But, to my mind, the possibility of those automatic cuts are a real thing, not some low probability event. I seriously don’t see where anyone is going to compromise at this point, and both parties have pretty mutually exclusive goals and aims. I know that or own management (government) is watching all of this pretty keenly, and THEY expect those cuts to happen and are trying to figure out what we’ll do…and giving folks notice that some things might be dropped and that there might be layoffs and furloughs as well.
I think you are totally misinterpreting what the administration is saying, to be honest 'luci. I think that the administration is no more sure than anyone else is that these automatic cuts won’t happen, but is hedging their bets and trying to downplay the possibility but giving companies a get out of jail free card wrt their obligations to provide notice if there are layoffs. Like I said earlier, I think BOTH political parties are using this entire lash up for political purposes.
Generally WARN Act notice is not required before layoff of temporary workers.
The regulations government the WARN Act speak directly to the issue of contract work and whether notice this is temporary work and thus notice is not required.
The example straight from CFR would seem to indicate that government military contracts are subject to WARN Act notice if the contract is expect to be renewed but is not.
I’d say Lockheed might have a case if they were only sending out warnings to employees who represent nine percent of their payroll (15,000 office workers or 15 executives). But even then it would be a little overboard. While the majority of Lockheed Martin’s revenue is based on contracts with the American government, they do have other significant sources of revenue that would be unaffected by sequestration. And payroll is only one part of the company’s expenses - there’s no reason why they would have to make all cuts in the payroll department. And even if they did make all cuts in payroll, there’s no reason why payroll cuts require layoffs - pay reductions are an alternative.
But Lockheed apparently chose to ignore all these realities and go straight to full apocalypse.
60 calendar days before February 3 which is December 5. That assumes that February 3 will be the last day of work for all affected workers. If some are laid off earlier then notice might have to go out to the group earlier.
There are exceptions which permit shorter warning periods for natural disasters, “unforeseeable business circumstances”, and “faltering companies”.
Even acts of Congress don’t rise to the level of natural disasters. Feel free to go read the CFR about what constitutes a “faltering company” in the regulations but I don’t think there is any way to see Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors meeting that definition. So we turn to “unforeseeable business circumstances”.
So if, at the December 5 date it is expected that the contract will be renewed and then something “sudden, dramatic, and unexpected action or condition outside the employer’s control” occurs which causes the non-renewal of the contract then shorter WARN Act notice might be possible. Not sure that Congressional inaction would qualify as sudden, dramatic and unexpected as of that date. Given the state of the current Congress, inaction seems to be quite expected.
I’m with Ravenman here. They should notify the exact same employees they notify every August 1st if there’s been no DoD appropriations bill passed yet for the next fiscal year.
There is genuine uncertainty about whether sequestration will occur.
There is genuine uncertainty about what effect sequestration will have on particular contracts.
The existence of genuine uncertainty about these two subjects eliminates WARN’s requirements for layoff notices.
I’ve cited a pretty relevant legal opinion on the subject, so rather than just say you disagree, it’d be nice to see some relevant legal opinions in disagreement.
I’m wondering something that I have no way to check. Did Lockheed tell all its workforce that Lockheed was telling them all? Or did they phrase their notification in such a way as to let the recipient believe that he was one of a specific class of employees that likely faced layoff?
Speculating darkly, perhaps, but seems to me that if you are working on the Veeblefetzer 9000 project, and you get this notice, you think “Obama is going to shut down the project”. An lo, all the other guys you know working on the Veeblefetzer 9000 project are also staring down the barrel, so its not just you.
But if you know right away that they are telling everybody they may get laid off, you’re gonna have a “Hey, wait a minute!” moment, and the game is up. Which it deserves to be, its a stupid game. And if that’s so, then apparently Lockheed respects their workforce enough to hire them, but has a very high estimate of their credulity.
Any way you slice this, somebody did something very, very stupid.
Just wanted to add my 2 cents from inside a major defense contractor. Following my retirement from the military, I got a job with a defense contractor. I am working in a very low level management position, meaning I don’t get the luxury of being “in the know” of all company goings on, but all of the employees ask me what’s going on.
We have known for a while that three of our contracts are not being renewed. One is ending this month, one in December, and one in January. Our group manager had a meeting with all of our workcenters, and said that we were going to lose 29 positions because of the loss of thes contracts.
Today, however, we heard rumblings of something new. The group manager reported that we will be having RIF (Reduction in Force) training for all hands next week. No one at my level knew where this came from, but a good possibility is that my company is contemplating the same thing as Lockheed.
I just want to say that #4 in Little Nemo’s post does not apply. We have so many contracts, there is no telling where the cuts may be applied, the only responsible thing to do is to warn the entire group that cuts may be coming, knowing that only a small portion of the people may be cut.
The issue is that by doing nothing sequestration occurs. For an “unforeseeable business circumstances” exception to be applicable the plain language of the regulation requires that such circumstance be “caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time that 60-day notice would have been required.”
Given that the sequestration issue is up for debate now it is pretty hard to argue that the matter was not foreseeable on or before the date of required notice.
So…
Sequestration is foreseeable, in fact barring Congressional action at this point it is inevitable. It matters not one bit whether there is uncertainty.
The WARN Act does not require all persons who are given notice to actually be laid off. It does not matter how cuts will be implemented by Congress. The companies can issue notices or could decide to carry excess payroll for the additional two months prior to being able to lay off persons working on eliminated projects.
Not at all. Notice is required prior to layoff. Federal law requires 60 day notice. Apparently some states are more strict and require a 90 day notice.
More from the regs… where it cites the language of the WARN Act:
In passing the act, Congress specifically stated their intent that employers are encouraged to provide notice when in doubt, even if it is not required by the act.
So, Iggy, explain why the situation under sequestration should be taken more seriously than the risk of a government shutdown which is set to happen every October 1 unless Congress passes legislation to defer the shutdown. Why should businesses send WARN notices on November 3, when they don’t send them annually on July 30?