WARN Act

When federal WARN triggers

Two events: a plant closing (an employment site, or units within it, shutting down with 50 or more job losses) and a mass layoff (500 or more employees at a single site, or 50 to 499 where that is at least a third of the active workforce). Counts run over rolling windows, part-timers are excluded from the thresholds but still get notice, and phased reductions can aggregate into a trigger nobody spotted. Notice goes to affected workers or their union, plus the state dislocated-worker unit and local government.

The exceptions and the cost of guessing wrong

Faltering company, unforeseeable business circumstances and natural disaster exceptions can shorten notice, but they are construed narrowly and litigated aggressively; sale-of-business and offer-of-transfer rules add their own wrinkles. The liability for getting it wrong is brutally simple: up to 60 days of back pay and benefits per employee, plus civil penalties, multiplied across everyone the notice missed.

The state layer and the planning discipline

Mini-WARN statutes lower thresholds and lengthen clocks (New York triggers at 25 job losses for employers of 50+, with 90 days' notice), so multi-state restructures need a state-by-state notice matrix before any announcement date is chosen. The comparison with this glossary's other countries is instructive: the US mandates no severance and no consultation, only notice; Australia and the UK mandate consultation and severance; Singapore mandates notification to the regulator. Different machinery, same underlying rule: workforce reductions run on statutory clocks that start earlier than executives want them to.