Heads Up Contractor Employees: WARN Act
People at NASA who really like their jobs — NASA
Keith’s note: I don’t want to freak people out, but there is a question that has been troubling me. A lot of media focus has been on departing NASA civil servants (which sucks) but there may be massive contractor employee layoffs as well (which equally sucks). If things stay on the path that they seem to be on something needs to break soon.
- NASA is acting as if the President’s Budget Recommendation (PBR) for FY 2026 is formal direction with regard to missions, contractor personnel issues. Congress has not finalized a FY 2026 budget yet. But the White House and NASA seemingly do not care. Congress has already complained about this.
- The WARN Act (29 USC Ch. 23 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) requires employers to provide 60 days advance written notice of mass layoffs. FY 2025 ends on 30 September and FY 2026 Begins on 1 October. So if these PBR directives are going to be implemented legally, would not WARN notices start to be sent out to employees on 1 August i.e. Friday?
- Let me know if you see or hear anything. Hang in there.
- UPDATE: I have learned that NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility contractors (Peraton) have received WARN letters.
- UDPATE: Significant contractor cuts (15-20% overall, some groups being eliminated) coming at the NASA Shared Services Center/ WARN letters are going out.
- UPDATE: NASA Goddard WARN notices are arriving with contractor employees – now: “We anticipate that the separations will become effective on October 1, 2025 (or within 14 days thereafter) and are expected to be permanent. This notice is being provided to you following the WARN Act, 29 U.S.C. 2101-2109, as implemented by federal regulations at 20 C.F.R. Part 639. The information set out below is based on the best information currently available to the Company, but may change due to subsequent events.” “This notice, is to inform you that you may be laid off due to these reductions. Based on current information, the Company believes that all job titles and positions at the employment site listed above may be impacted”
3 responses to “Heads Up Contractor Employees: WARN Act”
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Our contractor at our NASA facility is still hiring. On another note DOGE visited recently, I assume to evaluate facility redundancy. They were interested in our testing and hardware capabilities. Our division is helping improve SpaceX’s Starship. Our division is also consulting on a number of smaller aerospace companies’ small space probes. I think that will be the general shift. That NASA runs lage expensive test facilities that could never be profitable and it consults on private aerospace work. We are getting out of the business of building anything directly or working on anything directly aligned with the administration’s goals.
If you are correct, then NASA is reverting to the old NACA model. NACA had many collaborators but rarely led the projects. Industry and defense led and provided the budget. NASA researched particular areas and wrote technical reports.
I am interested in whether contractors in non critical functions like ‘communications’ or ‘education’ (public affairs) have gotten notices since all the field centers were supposed to have these functions eliminated. How about those who are in these functions bit attached to the program, like the large contingent supporting ISS?