November Surprise?

by Alana Goodman

Last week, I wrote about how the sequester will trigger the WARN Act, which requires employers to warn staff of pending layoffs a minimum of 60 days in advance. That means potentially hundreds of thousands of public and private sector workers would receive layoff warning notices on November 2 — 60 days before sequestration hits, and just five days before the presidential election.

Needless to say, this is a BFD for President Obama. So you may not be too shocked to learn that the administration might be pressuring employers to delay these notices until after Election Day. HotAir’s Tina Korbe flags this key item in Sen. Jim Inhofe’s floor speech last week:

“I have every reason to believe, because I’ve heard from people in industry, that the president of the United States is trying to get them to avoid sending pink slips out until after the November 7 election,” said Inhofe. “I would remind him that we have something called the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the WARN Act. It requires these companies to give 60 days’ notice of pending layoffs.

“Since sequestration will take place on January 2, these workers must be notified of their pink slip by November 2. This is what I’d like to remind those companies: they don’t have to wait. If they want to notify workers today, they can do that. I think it is imperative that the workers who are going to be laid off work as a result of the Obama Sequestration be notified in advance of the November election. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that happens.”

As Inhofe says, failing to send the layoff notices a minimum of 60 days in advance would be a violation of the WARN Act; and the last thing these companies want is a slew of employee lawsuits to compound their budget cuts. One thing is clear — if sequestration is to take place, the massive impact on the job market will be felt before the election. Potentially just days before.

Alana Goodman

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/23/november-surprise-2/#more-800441

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