I work for a government-academic partnership and *nobody* communicates, ever! My supervisor on the gov't side is part-time, as in like a few hours a week and the director on the academic side is literally inaccessible. He doesn't check his email or return phone calls and he is never in his office. Once in a while I really need something, like right now my assistant is graduating and I need to secure funding to keep him on staff, and it's just slipping throught the cracks - nobody's got thier head in the game. What can I do to get the "bosses" talking?!??

If it's as dire as you say, my thought would be that your supervisors have supervisors, don't they?  Go to them.

NO !!! DON'T GO ABOVE YOUR SUPERVISORS HEAD.. thats a sure fire way to get canned.

I have done that and it's usually helped in the short term, but created problems in the long-term. My idiot supervisor is part-time and only turns out a few hours every other week at that. So, I can justify going over his head due to his absenteeism, but he still freaks and retaliates. And his supervisor is only an interim in that position and appears to hate supervising even more than he does. It's such a comedy of errors.