At Risk of a Layoff? Make sure you’re WARNed

August 17th, 2009. By AbiK

When facing an employment layoff, typically there’s a lot of closed door meetings, hush-hush hallway conversations, and if you’ve been involved with a major corporate “restructuring”, there can even be code names. Lots and lots of secrecy. But when it comes time to actually announce mass layoffs, there’s a little thing called the The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act—aka, WARN. The WARN Act is in place to protect workers from covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs (so it does not apply to a sole individual losing his job).

Pleading Ignorance takes a look at the WARN Act this week—it continues to me a timely topic given the economy. So let’s learn some more…

What is the WARN Act for plant closings and mass layoffs?

According to the US Dept. of Labor Employment and Training Administration, the WARN Act:

…offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs. This notice must be provided to either affected workers or their representatives (e.g., a labor union); to the State dislocated worker unit; and to the appropriate unit of local government.

The WARN Act covers employers who have at least 100 employees—not including employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months, and not including employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week. The WARN Act covers both public and private for-profit and non-profit companies, though it does not cover regular Federal, State, and local government entities that provide public services.

In terms of employees themselves, the WARN Act covers hourly and salaried employees, as well as managerial and supervisory employees. To spell things out, loss of employment is defined as one of the following:

1. An employment termination, other than a discharge for cause, voluntary departure, or retirement

2. A layoff exceeding 6 months

3. A reduction in an employee’s hours of work of more than 50% in each month of any 6-month period

There are some special considerations (aren’t there always?), such as what actually qualifies a closing or layoff for the need for formalized notice according to WARN? Three situations can trigger the need for employee notification (doleta.gov/programs/factsht/warn):

Plant Closings: A covered employer must give notice if an employment site will be shut down, and the shutdown will result in an employment loss  for 50 or more employees during any 30-day period.  

Mass Layoff: A covered employer must give notice if there is to be a mass layoff which does not result from a plant closing, but which will result in an employment loss at the employment site during any 30-day period for 500 or more employees, or for 50-499 employees if they make up at least 33% of the employer’s active workforce.  

Combined Losses Meet Threshold Level: An employer must give notice if the number of job losses that occur during a 30-day period fails to meet the threshold requirements of a plant closing or mass layoff—but the number of job losses for 2 or more groups of workers, each of which is less than the minimum number needed to trigger notice, reaches the threshold level, during any 90-day period, of either a plant closing or mass layoff. Job losses within any 90-day period will count together toward WARN threshold levels, unless the employer demonstrates that the employment losses during the 90-day period are the result of separate and distinct actions and causes.

This outlines what is generally covered by the WARN Act. For more information, visit the US Department of Labor Education & Training Administration site to view the WARN Act Fact Sheet—or, if you feel you may have a claim on a violation of the WARN Act, contact an employment lawyer for a consultation.

Tags: Employment, Pleading Ignorance, WARN Act

This was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Employment, Pleading Ignorance . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.