Fact or Fiction: WARN applies to parents and affiliates

Welcome back to “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post”.

As you know, if you read yesterday’s post, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), a federal law, protects workers by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to notify them 60 calendar days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs. But did you know that many states have their own mini-WARN acts? New Jersey is one of them. Here is a chart comparing the difference between the federal and NJ WARN laws.

So, does NJ’s mini-WARN apply to parent and affiliated companies? The answer is yes, if they satisfy the U.S. Department of Labor’s five-factor test:

common ownership;

common directors and/or officers;

de facto exercise of control;

unity of personnel policies emanating from a common source; and

the dependency of operations.

This is the same test applied under the federal WARN law. For more on this test, and how it may apply in NJ, check out DeRosa v. Accredited Home Lenders, Inc.