When Does an Employer Have to Give a 60-Day Notice Before Laying-Off Employees?

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires certain employers to give 60 days advance notice of a mass lay off to its employees. WARN, however, does not require the notice in certain circumstances. The court having appellate jurisdiction over Utah, the Tenth Circuit, decided earlier this week in Gross v. Hale-Halsell Company, that a wholesale grocery warehouse and distribution center was not required to give such a notice because unforeseeable business circumstances prevented the company from giving the notice sixty days before the lay offs. WARN still requires, however, that even if a business cannot give sixty days advance notice, it give notice as soon as practicable. The Tenth Circuit ruled that the employer had met the requirement even though it had given the workers only one day’s notice before the lay-offs.