What is the WARN Act?

Prior to 1988 a company could shut down a plant without giving their employees any notice. You could be working one day and laid off the next without any warning. In 1988 the WARN Act (The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) became law.

What is the WARN act?

Your employer must provide you with 60 days notice prior to laying you off during a plant closing or a mass layoff. In order for you to receive the 60 day notice the company has to have at least 100 full time employees or the 100 employees must have worked over 4000 hours.

Warn also protects employees if they fall under the following provisions

• Plant closings where at least 50 workers are laid off
• A mass layoff where between 50 and 499 employees are laid off or at leas 33 percent of the employees
• 500 or more employees are laid off at a single site
  
  Federal, state and local employees are not covered under WARN. Neither are temporary employees. ( Part time employees are covered). There are exceptions (loopholes):

• If giving a general mass layoff notice would have an adverse effect on a company that is trying to turn their business around.
• Unforeseeable business changes, in other words something happened that the company didn’t foresee, this seems rather vague like number one
• natural disasters

Some states like New York have their own WARN act.