Short-Term Layoff Triggers WARN Act Obligations

It’s well known that California is an at-will employment state, which means that employers may generally terminate individual or small groups of employees without notice. But that does not apply when an employer undergoes a mass layoff — in such cases, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) requires that employers give affected employees advance notice of the layoff. And recently, a California Court of Appeal clarified that employers also must follow the WARN Act’s notice provisions when the layoffs will be for a short period of time (The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, et al. v. NASSCO Holdings, Inc. 17 Cal.App.5th 1105 (2017)).​