If Defense is only 20% of the budget, WHY is Defense taking 42-48% (depending on which set of numbers you want to believe) of the Sequestration cuts???

At our little golf tournament yesterday, this was a subject of conversation, and the fact that most of the defense contractors are already laying people off/giving early retirements, and ARE going to send out warnings of possible massive firings in either Oct or Nov, as required by the The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).

Which is contrary to the BS now being put out by the Department of Labor-

Major defense contractors are wary of the impending cuts and debating whether they need to advise employees 60 days in advance of possible layoffs. That would be four days before the election. A law says those notices would have to go out ahead of time.

The Labor Department, however, said Monday that federal contractors do not have to warn their employees about potential layoffs from the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts due to kick in Jan. 2. The guidance letter said it would be “inappropriate” for employers to send such warnings because it is still speculative if and where the cuts might occur.

Because if they do this, it’s gonna get REAL interesting on 6 Nov! A lot of those layoffs WILL be union folks, and how are they going to like that???

The White House told agency officials Tuesday to “continue normal spending and operations” since more than five months remain for Congress to act to avert the automatic cuts.

Full article in the WAPO HERE…

And a counter point from the Washington Times HERE. 

And from the WARN Act, the actual words of the requirement…

General Provisions

WARN offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs. This notice must be provided to either affected workers or their representatives (e.g., a labor union); to the State dislocated worker unit; and to the appropriate unit of local government.

Employer Coverage

In general, employers are covered by WARN if they have 100 or more employees, not counting employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months and not counting employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week. Private, for-profit employers and private, nonprofit employers are covered, as are public and quasi-public entities which operate in a commercial context and are separately organized from the regular government. Regular Federal, State, and local government entities which provide public services are not covered.

Employee Coverage

Employees entitled to notice under WARN include hourly and salaried workers, as well as managerial and supervisory employees. Business partners are not entitled to notice.

What Triggers Notice

Plant Closing: A covered employer must give notice if an employment site (or one or more facilities or operating units within an employment site) will be shut down, and the shutdown will result in an employment loss (as defined later) for 50 or more employees during any 30-day period. This does not count employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months or employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week for that employer. These latter groups, however, are entitled to notice (discussed later).

Mass Layoff: A covered employer must give notice if there is to be a mass layoff which does not result from a plant closing, but which will result in an employment loss at the employment site during any 30-day period for 500 or more employees, or for 50-499 employees if they make up at least 33% of the employer’s active workforce. Again, this does not count employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months or employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week for that employer. These latter groups, however, are entitled to notice (discussed later).

An employer also must give notice if the number of employment losses which occur during a 30-day period fails to meet the threshold requirements of a plant closing or mass layoff, but the number of employment losses for 2 or more groups of workers, each of which is less than the minimum number needed to trigger notice, reaches the threshold level, during any 90-day period, of either a plant closing or mass layoff. Job losses within any 90-day period will count together toward WARN threshold levels, unless the employer demonstrates that the employment losses during the 90-day period are the result of separate and distinct actions and causes.

Funny, I don’t see ANY wording in there about this being ‘optional’…

At this point, about the only thing I can think of is to defeat ALL the incumbents and start over… And that is exactly what we’ll have to do; and hope that we actually have time to fix things before we become a third world country militarily! 

Which reminds me, I need more duct tape… I’m down to the last roll, and using a roll a week to keep my head from exploding from all the BS coming out of DC…