"The decision by Lockheed means thousands won't get layoff notices weeks or days before Election Day, which might have cast a crucial blow against President Obama's reelection chances."
In an ironic way, this might actually make matters worse for Obama: if you work for a defense contractor and management decided that your job is safe, you would've known once the layoff notices were sent. Now almost everybody working for them is going to be living in fear of being laid off because of the uncertainty...
It doesn't work that way. They give a notice saying something like "In accordance with federal law, this is notification today that 400 people across the business are going to be affected by an upcoming reduction in force in 60 days" but they don't say who those people are. So you never really know if your job is safe. I guess the union guys do since it's based on seniority but white collar workers don't, we just know a bunch of people are getting canned and we might be one of them.