Employees of the Nation's research labs should be treated with human dignity, even when being dismissed due to financial exigency or "restructuring". People who have worked faithfully for the research mission of the Nation for decades should not be kicked out on the street within 30 minutes of learning that they are being dismissed (with armed guards escorting them out). These are methods from a "Mad Men" episode, which President Obama so eloquently decried in his 2014 "State of the Union" address.
Yet this keeps happening, most recently to 46 people laid of from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (without any accusation of wrongdoing). If the President can order Federal contractors to pay a minimum wage, he should also order them to use less draconian methods for lay-offs.



