A WARN notice is required when 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 fewer than 20 hours per week) is laying off at least 50 people at a single site of employment or employs 100 or more workers who work at least a combined 4,000 hours per week and is a private for-profit business, private non-profit organization, or quasi-public entity separately organized from regular government.

Affected employees are those who may be expected to experience an employment loss. They may be hourly and salaried workers, including managerial and supervisory employees and non-strikers. Affected employees include:

• Employees who are terminated or laid off for more than 6 months or who have their hours reduced 50% or more in any 6-month period as a result of the plant closing or mass layoff;
• Employees who may reasonably be expected to experience an employment loss as a result of a proposed plant closing or mass layoff. If the employer has a seniority system that involves bumping rights (see glossary and FAQs), the employer should use its best
  efforts to give notice to the workers who will actually lose their jobs as a result of the system. If that is not possible, then an employer must give notice to the incumbent in the position being eliminated;
• Workers who are on temporary layoff but have a reasonable expectation
  of recall; this includes workers on workers’ compensation, medical, maternity, or other leave; and
• Part-time workers (see glossary). (These workers do not count when determining whether there has been a plant closing or mass layoff, but they are entitled to receive WARN notice if there is one.)

WARN is triggered when a covered employer:

• Closes a facility or discontinues an operating unit (see glossary) permanently or temporarily, affecting at least 50 employees, not counting part-time workers, at a single site of employment. A plant closing also occurs when an employer closes an operating unit that has fewer than 50 workers but that closing also involves the layoff of enough other workers to make the total number of layoffs 50 or more;
• Lays off 500 or more workers (not counting part-time workers) at a single site of employment during a 30-day period; or lays off 50-499 workers (not counting part-time workers), and these layoffs constitute 33% of the employer’s total active workforce (not counting part-time workers) at the single site of employment;
• Announces a temporary layoff of less than 6 months that meets either of the two criteria above and then decides to extend the layoff for more than 6 months. If the extension occurs for reasons that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time the layoff was originally announced, notice need only be given when the need for the extension becomes known. Any other case is treated as if notice was required for the original layoff; or
• Reduces the hours of work for 50 or more workers by 50% or more for each month in any 6-month period. Thus, a plant closing or mass layoff need not be permanent to trigger WARN.

The Governor designated ADWS as the recipient of mandatory employer notices of plant closings and layoffs under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). Should you be required to provide notice of plant closings or mass layoffs as provided for in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (WARN, Public Law 100-379), the notice should be mailed to:

The United States Department of Labor’s Interim Rule published in the Federal Register on Friday, December 2, 1988, (20 CFR Part 639) provides who shall give notice and that the following information be included in the notice:

1. The name and address of the employment site where the plant closing or mass layoff will occur;
2. The nature of the planned action, i.e., whether it is a plant closing or mass layoff;
3. The expected date of the first separation and the anticipated schedule for making the separations;
4. The job titles of positions to be affected and the number of affected employees in each job classification;
5. A statement as to the existence of any applicable bumping rights;
6. The name of each union and the name and address of the chief elected officer of each union; and
7. The name, address, and telephone number of a company official to contact for further information. In addition, it is recommended that the notice include a statement of whether the planned action is expected to be permanent or temporary, and if temporary, its expected duration.