Obama and the democrat machine play down and dirty with the defense contractors.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Obama's administration is forcing Lockheed Martin to postpone a 123,000 layoffs until after the election under the threat of losing government contracts!

After Obama guidance, Lockheed won't issue layoff notices this year

By Jeremy Herb - 10/01/12 03:45 PM ET

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Lockheed Martin said Monday it will not issue employee layoff notices this year, ending an election-year showdown with the Obama administration.

The company said it based its decision on new guidance issued Friday by the Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon.

The guidance said the Pentagon did not anticipate killing any contracts on Jan. 2, the day automatic spending cuts are set to begin hitting defense spending. The guidance also said the federal government would cover severance costs that are mandated under a federal layoff notices law.

The decision by Lockheed means tens of thousands won't get layoff notices days before Election Day, which might have cast a crucial blow against President Obama's reelection chances.

Other defense firms that had also indicated they could send notices of potential layoffs in November were following Lockheed’s suit Monday, saying they would not be sending them before sequestration took effect.

Layoff notices could have been of particular concern in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., a key part of the swing state that both Romney and Obama are targeting. The suburbs are home to thousands of employees of defense contractors.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly attacked Obama over the sequestration cuts and the loss of defense jobs, particularly while campaigning in states like Virginia.

Republicans argue that last week's guidance was a politically motivated effort by the administration to protect Obama ahead of the election, and some were livid on Monday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the administration's actions illegal and warned he would do everything he could to prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for severance. 

“I will do everything in my power to make sure not one taxpayer dollar is spent reimbursing companies for failure to comply with WARN Act,” Graham told The Hill in a phone interview Monday. “That is so beyond the pale — I think it’s patently illegal.”

Bob Stevens, Lockheed's CEO, created a firestorm in June when he threatened to send out notices of potential layoffs to all 123,000 of his employees on Nov. 2 — four days before the election — due to a law requiring companies to give 60 days' notice of mass layoffs.

The Obama administration pushed back in July, telling contractors it was “inappropriate” to issue the notices tied to sequestration, but Lockheed and a handful of other contractors said they were likely to do so anyway.

Stevens said in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last month that the Labor guidance did not provide enough clarity to the company to prevent it from having to legally send out the notices.

“I do not look forward to sending these notifications, but in the absence of more clarity and certainty in how sequestration will be implemented, we have an obligation to tell them that their jobs are potentially at risk,” Stevens wrote.

But the new guidance sent out Friday raised the stakes, telling contractors that the federal government would cover the costs of employee terminations under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act if contracts were canceled — but only if the contractors did not issue the notices.

The guidance from the Office of Management and Budget said that if plant closings or mass layoffs occur under sequestration, then “employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability as determined by a court” would be paid for by the contracting federal agency.

The Pentagon’s acquisitions office also issued guidance Friday, saying DOD “does not anticipate” having to terminate or significantly modify contracts on Jan. 2.

Those pledges from the Obama administration were enough for Lockheed to feel that it did not have to send out the notices in November.

“After careful review of the additional guidance provided by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Defense, we will not issue sequestration-related WARN notices this year,” Lockheed spokeswoman Jennifer Allen said in a statement.

“The additional guidance further ensures that, if contract actions due to sequestration were to occur, our employees would be provided the protection of the WARN Act and that the costs of this protection would be allowable and recoverable,” she said.

BAE Systems, which told McCain in its September letter that it might “have no choice” but to issue the layoffs, said Monday it was not going to before sequestration takes effect.

“As it remains less than clear how and when sequestration might be implemented for individual programs, BAE Systems has determined it will not issue conditional WARN notifications to all of its employees following the guidance issued by OMB and DoD last week,” BAE spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in an email.

EADS North America spokesman James Darcy said Monday that “if sequestration does occur and it is clear that it will impact our on-going operations next year, we will issue WARN Act notices to those employees engaged in affected federal contract activities.”

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of trying to hide job losses in an election year by pushing companies not to send the notices.

McCain, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) issued a statement Friday in response to the new guidance saying the administration was “cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis.”

Graham said Monday he believed defense contractors should still be sending out the layoff notices.

“The WARN Act is crystal clear when it comes to defense contractors having to issue notices of impending layoffs as a result of sequestration,” Graham said in a statement. “I hope defense contractors will follow the law and warn their employees about the devastating impact of sequestration.”

The Friday guidance from the Obama administration came as the first WARN Act deadline tied to sequestration was approaching this week, as California and New York have state laws that require 90 days' notice.

Lockheed’s outspoken statements about mass-layoff notices were not universally supported by the industry, however, and many big defense contractors had already said they were not planning to send any notices related to sequestration.

Those who had threatened to send the notices said they were motivated by the uncertainty surrounding the sequestration cuts, which would reduce the Pentagon budget by $500 billion over the next decade.

"Sequestration" is  democrat machine

code-speak for LIE AND CHEAT about cutting taxes by cutting spending. Obama and the democrat machine are in full control of both garnering votes from defense contractor employees AND controlling the purse strings of government spending. The opposition in congress has been completely neutered. Listen to them scream!

The democrats have done it again! That's what guys like Lindsey Graham and John the "maverick" McCain get for playing both sides of the political aisle!

STUPID IS WHAT I CALL IT !