Heh - just following published law here

When a defense contractor gets a funding cut and has to lay of workers, they are required by law to give said workers 60 days notice. The current regime is gutting the military so a lot of contracts are not being renewed on Wednesday, January 2nd 2013. This puts the notice date at late Saturday, November 3rd or early Sunday, November 4th. Realistically the pink slips are probably going to be distributed on Friday, November 2nd -- four days before the election on the 6th. There was a kerfuffle last July regarding this - the Labor Department issued a Memo! From Federal News Radio:

Labor Dept. says defense layoffs 'speculative,' no need for warning
Defense industry executives have spent the last few weeks warning that across-the-board budgets cuts set to take effect in January could lead them to issue notices in the fall warning of impending mass layoffs.

However, in a new memo issued Monday, the Labor Department said the lack of clarity about how the budget cuts would be applied means it would be "inappropriate" to issue Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notifications.

The impact of the cuts � $1.2 trillion over 10 years � on individual contracts and programs is "speculative and unforeseeable," Assistant Labor Secretary Jane Oates wrote in a memo.

A bit more:

"Although it is currently known that sequestration may occur, it is also known that efforts are being made to avoid sequestration," the memo stated. "Thus, even the occurrence of sequestration is not necessarily foreseeable."

Of course, Obama was for this warning before he was against it -- The Washington Times:

Sen. Obama supported layoff warnings; now sees no need
President Obama's administration doesn�t see the need for defense contractors to warn employees about possible layoffs from across-the-board budget cuts, but in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama railed against employers for failing to notify workers who were in danger of losing their jobs.

�The least employers can do when they�re anticipating layoffs is to let workers know they�re going to be out of a job and a paycheck with enough time to plan for their future,� Mr. Obama said in a news release on July 17, 2007, while campaigning for president.

Well today, we have this from Politico

Defense firms confirm layoff warnings
Major defense contractors have confirmed they�ll send tens of thousands of employee layoff warnings shortly before Election Day, according to correspondence released Monday by Arizona Sen. John McCain.

McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to jump-start congressional action to avert automatic, across-the-board budget restrictions set to take effect early next year. Hawks and defense vendors hope the threat of mass layoff warnings in late October will light a fire under a deadlocked Congress. Already, they point out the mere threat of the year-end �sequester� is hurting the defense industry and the broader national economy.

Nothing says Republican like a pink slip four days before the election. That give every recipient the weekend to talk to friends and other family members -- spreading the good news. Now if the economy was growing, that would be another story...