WARN act can ruin your layoff plan, are you at risk?

Here at Modern Business Associates, we frequently deal with federal labor and employment laws and how they affect our clients. Laws relating to layoffs have been a hot topic lately. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN act) is one such hot legal issue.

The WARN act sets forth specific notification requirements for covered employers undergoing certain layoffs. (States including California, Illinois, Maine, and New Jersey have enacted similar legislation expanding an employer's notification obligations.)

In part, the WARN act requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide workers with 60 days written notice of:

1. Plant Closings
2. Mass Layoffs

Under the WARN act, a "plant closing" is a permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site of employment resulting in an employment loss of 50 or more employees during a 30-day period.

Under the WARN act, a "mass layoff" is either a reduction in workforce resulting in a single-site employment loss of at least 33 percent of the site's employees (a minimum of 50 employees must be affected), or an employer's overall loss of 500 or more total employees.

With certain exceptions, employers who fail to comply with the WARN act, face substantial monetary liability. An affected employer must identify and adhere to its obligations under the WARN act and its state counterparts.

Modern Business Associates frequently deals with complex HR issues. As a Professional Employee Organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics including designing plans for layoffs and HR communication plans appropriate to federal labor laws.