WARN Advisor

What Information must be Included in the Notice?

Notice to you must be written and specific and must contain all of the following information:

• The name and telephone number of a company contact person who can provide additional information;
• An explanation of whether the mass layoff or plant closing will be temporary or permanent, and whether the entire plant is being closed;
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• The expected date of the first job losses, and the date on which you will be separated; and
• An indication whether bumping rights exist.

Notice to your union, if you are represented by a union, must contain all of the following information:

• The name and address of the employment site where the plant closing or mass layoff will occur;
• The name and telephone number of a company contact person who can provide additional information;
• An explanation of whether the mass layoff or plant closing will be temporary or permanent, and whether the entire plant is being closed
• The expected date of the first job losses, and the planned schedule of terminations or layoffs; and
• The job titles of the positions to be affected and the names of the workers currently holding those positions.

Your employer has some leeway in predicting the dates on which workers will be separated and may give you notice that you will be separated within a two-week (14-day) period after a certain date. If your employer chooses to use a 14-day period, the notice must be given 60 days before the first day of the 14 day period.

The notice should be based on the facts available when the notice is due to be given. The WARN regulations provide that errors in a notice that result from changes in the facts or that are minor and inadvertent should not be considered to violate WARN.

What the notice to workers and other entities must contain is addressed in Section 639.7 of the WARN regulations and discussed in the Preamble to the 1989 Final Rule.

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