The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act-known as WARN-was passed in 1988 to give employees fair warning when their plants were about to shut down. But the General Accounting Office, studying actions taken in 11 states, has concluded the law is so weak it was ignored by 54 percent of the companies involved, robbing employees of their right to have adequate advance notice that they were about to lose their jobs. Congress should strengthen provisions and enforcement of the law to give workers the protection they deserve.
The GAO study found the law allows so many exemptions that companies have easily bypassed its precise requirements, and certainly its spirit. For example, the survey showed, even though the law provides for 60 days’ notice to workers whose plants are shutting down, that warning can be suspended for any number of reasons, including when businesses are seeking new customers or trying to raise capital or when the closures or layoffs are caused by unforeseen business conditions or natural disasters. That range of reasons seems to cover practically all reasons a plant would shut down, leaving workers scant real protection.
. . . Republican senators who complained about the GAO study said other aspects of the act also deserve more investigation, such as its effect on company productivity, international competitiveness, unemployment rates and the ability of workers to find new jobs.
Those angles are important, too, and should be reconsidered. But the plant-closing bill is not doing its job. For Congress to fulfill the hopes of workers who thought they were being protected from losing their job without notice, it should be strengthened.
