WARN Advisor

Who Must Be Notified?

Your employer is required to notify:

• You or, if you are represented by a union, your union representative;


• The chief elected official of the local government where the employment site is located; and


• The State Rapid Response Dislocated Worker Unit so that planning can begin for early intervention services prior to your layoff to help you become re-employed as quickly as possible.

If you are represented by a union, it will receive the notice of the impending mass layoff or plant closing. Your employer is not required to provide an individual notice.

If there is more than one local government unit, then the employer must notify the chief elected official of the unit to which the employer pays the highest taxes.

In cases where there is a seniority system involving bumping rights (that is, a system in which workers with greater seniority whose jobs are abolished may replace (bump)workers with less seniority so that the worker who ultimately loses his/her job is not the worker whose job was abolished). You may not receive an individual 60 day written notice from your employer even though WARN applies. This situation will not arise often, since most seniority systems are created under collective bargaining agreements and the union is the party required to be notified. If there is a seniority/bumping system and no union is involved, your employer must make a good faith effort to determine who will actually lose their job as the result of the seniority system. But your employer is not required to predict exactly who will lose a job as a result of a complex seniority/bumping system. If your employer cannot exactly predict who will lose their job as a result of a seniority/bumping system, your employer must give notice to the person whose job is being eliminated, even though that person may later bump another worker.

Who must receive notice under WARN is addressed in Section 639.6 of the WARN regulations and discussed in the Preamble to the 1989 Final Rule.

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