Obama Bribing Defense Contractors to Hide Looming Layoffs

Barack Obama is practicing a sneaky way of firing people from their jobs without them knowing until after he’s reelected. His labor department is, in effect, bribing defense contractors to wait until after the November election to announce the certain layoffs that will occur as a result of Obama’s sequestration. 

Here’s how it works. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act generally requires employers with at least 100 employees to announce to employees that they will be fired 60 days before they are let go if the layoffs are reasonably foreseeable. Because of the looming sequestration, courtesy of Obama, mass layoffs at defense plants are expected to occur after January 1. But 60 days before that would mean the announcement would come just before the election, and Obama would have to deal with thousands of disgruntled former employees.

In July, the Labor Department laid the groundwork for this duplicity, saying  it would be “inappropriate” for contractors to issue notices of potential layoffs that resulted from sequestration cuts. But a few contractors, most notably Lockheed Martin, wanted to follow the rule of law, and send out notices the way they were supposed to.

Then, this past Friday, the Office of Management and Budget sent out a letter to contractors that they would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration — but only if the contractors follow the Labor guidance. The Labor Department knows that “employee compensation costs for [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification] WARN act liability as determined by a court” might be likely, and they want to make sure the defense contractors don’t lose a cent in covering up the layoffs.

So just as the Democrats grandly announced last week they would investigate the Benghazi scandal (but tried to cover up that the investigation would occur after the election), now Obama and his shady practices strike again, leaving unsuspecting workers thinking they will have jobs when Obama is planning to leave them jobless.

There is no end to the duplicity of this administration. All Americans must be Joe Wilson now; we must stand up, point our fingers at Obama, and cry out, “Liar!”