Worker Adjustment And Retraining Notification Act – WARN

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) protects the rights of workers, their families, and communities by requiring that employers give 60-days notice of a plant closing, or other forms of mass layoffs...with certain stipulations. It’s a U.S. labor law put into place after too many companies shut down without telling employees until right before they were laid off, causing economic shocks (and a lot of anger, obviously).

So what are the stipulations for WARN to be applicable? There have to be 100 or more employees who have worked six or more months in the last year at a rate of 20 or more hours per week. WARN also only happens if there are 50 or more workers at a single location laid off, or if the layoff is temporary (there are lots of little exceptions like this in there). Another is if the layoff couldn’t have been predicted, like...if there was some natural disaster.

WARN gives workers who were part of a mass layoff some warning time to get training and/or find a new job. Unfortunately, you won’t get WARNed if you’ve participated in strikes (bummer, man).