Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN)

In our ever-changing economy, many companies are reorganizing their operations to keep competitive. While such actions can help a company become more efficient, it may lead to the elimination of existing jobs and facilities. The ability of workers to readjust and find new employment after they have lost their jobs is a major concern of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

For many workers who have been dislocated due to a layoff or plant closure, early intervention can play an important role in their successful reemployment and can help workers and communities adjust to the effects of layoffs and plant closings. As a result, Congress passed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act that went into effective on February 4, 1989. The WARN Act provide workers with sufficient time to seek other employment or retraining opportunities before losing their jobs.

Employees are protected by WARN if their employer fits the following profile:

It is a business with 100 or more full-time workers (not counting workers who have less than 6 months on the job and workers who work less than 20 hours per week), or employs 100 or more workers who work at least a combined 4,000 hours a week, and is a private for-profit business, private non-profit organization, or quasi-public entity separately organized from the regular government.

Workers protected by WARN may be hourly or salaried workers, including managerial and supervisory employees.

Employees may be protected by WARN if their job loss occurs as part of:

A plant closing—where the employer shuts down a facility or operating unit within a single site of employment and lays off at least 50 full-time workers;

A mass layoff—where the employer lays off either between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the single site of employment; or

A situation where the employer lays off 500 or more full-time workers at a single site of employment.

Employees are entitled to WARN notice if the above conditions apply to their situation and they:

Are terminated from their employment, but not if they voluntarily quit, retire, or are discharged for cause;

Are laid off for more than 6 months; or

Have their regular hours of work reduced by more than half during each month of a 6-month period.

Employees are not protected by the WARN Act if they are considered any of the following:

Strikers, or workers who have been locked out in a labor dispute;

Workers working on temporary projects or facilities of the business who clearly understand the temporary nature of the work when hired;

Business partners, consultants, or contract employees assigned to the business but who have a separate employment relationship with another employer and are paid by that other employer, or who are self-employed; and

Regular federal, state, or local government employees.

Notice is not required in certain cases involving transfers because the transfer is not considered an employment loss. If the employer offers an employee a transfer to a job within a reasonable commuting distance, the employee is not considered to have suffered an employment loss, whether or not they take the job. If the employer offers the employee a job outside a reasonable commuting distance, the employee must accept the job within 30 days, or they are considered to have suffered an employment loss.