California WARN Act: Coverage, 60-Day Notice, and Penalties

The California WARN Act requires employers with 75 or more workers to give 60 days’ advance written notice before a mass layoff, plant closure, or relocation, and employers who skip or shorten that notice owe affected workers back pay and benefits for every day of the violation. The law lives in California Labor Code sections 1400 through 1408, and it is broader than the federal WARN statute: more employers are covered, more events trigger it, and far fewer excuses let an employer out of it.

Which Employers Are Covered

Cal-WARN applies to any industrial or commercial facility, or part of one, that employs 75 or more people. Full-time and part-time workers both count. The threshold is backward-looking: if the facility hit 75 employees at any point during the 12 months before notice would have been due, the employer is covered.¹

Only employees who worked for the company at least six months during that same 12-month window count toward the 75-person floor. A parent corporation is treated as the employer of any facility its subsidiary directly owns and operates, so running operations through a smaller entity does not avoid coverage.¹

Events That Trigger the 60-Day Notice

Four kinds of employer actions set the notice clock running.

Plant Closure

A plant closure is the shutdown of all or substantially all operations at a covered facility. The number of workers affected does not matter. Even a shutdown that ends only a handful of jobs triggers notice if the facility qualifies.¹

Mass Layoff

A mass layoff is a job cut affecting 50 or more employees at a covered facility within any 30-day period, for lack of work or lack of funds. California counts heads only. There is no percentage-of-workforce requirement.¹

Relocation

A relocation is a move of all or substantially all operations to a new site at least 100 miles away. As with a closure, the headcount of affected employees does not matter.¹

Call Center Offshoring

An employer moving a call center, or a significant share of its call volume, out of the United States must give 60 days’ notice regardless of the number of workers affected. A call center for this purpose is any facility where workers’ primary job is handling incoming phone calls or electronic communications for customer service or similar functions.²

How Cal-WARN Is Stricter Than Federal WARN

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and the California version can both apply to the same event, and complying with one does not mean complying with the other. California’s rules reach further at nearly every point.

Federal WARN covers employers with 100 or more full-time workers. Cal-WARN covers employers with 75 or more and counts part-time workers.²
Under federal law, a layoff of 50 to 499 workers triggers notice only if those workers make up at least 33 percent of the full-time workforce. Cal-WARN has no percentage requirement.²
Federal law requires a closure to affect at least 50 workers before notice applies. Cal-WARN has no minimum headcount for closures.
Federal law allows employers to shorten or skip notice for unforeseeable business circumstances or natural disasters. Cal-WARN recognizes neither excuse. Its only circumstance-based carve-outs are a physical calamity and an act of war.³
Call center relocations to a foreign country require notice under California law. There is no federal equivalent.²

The Narrow Exceptions

Cal-WARN’s exceptions are short, and the gap between what people assume is excused and what the statute actually excuses catches many employers off guard.

Advance notice is not required when the layoff, closure, or relocation is caused by a physical calamity or an act of war. That is the only circumstance-based exception. Losing a major contract, running out of operating cash, or facing a sudden economic downturn does not excuse an employer from the 60-day requirement.³

The statute also sets aside notice for certain project-based and seasonal work. Workers hired for a specific project in broadcasting, motion picture production, or certain on-site construction and mining occupations are not covered when the project ends, provided they were hired with the understanding the job lasted only for that project. Seasonal employees told at hire that their position was temporary and seasonal are likewise excluded.⁴

What a Compliant Notice Looks Like

The written notice must go out at least 60 calendar days before the layoff, closure, or relocation takes effect, and it goes to four recipients:³

Affected employees, or their union representative if one exists
The California Employment Development Department
The Local Workforce Development Board
The chief elected official of the city and county where the worksite sits

The notice itself has to state the effective date of the action and whether it is permanent or temporary, the schedule for separations, the job titles affected and how many positions will be cut from each, a company contact who can answer questions, and a description of any services the employer plans to offer affected workers.

What You’re Owed if Your Employer Violated the Law

An employer that fails to give full 60 days’ notice owes two separate categories of money: payments to the affected workers, and civil penalties payable to the government.

Each affected worker is entitled to back pay and the value of lost benefits for every day of the violation. If the employer gave 30 days’ notice instead of 60, the violation is 30 days long. The maximum per employee is either 60 days or half the number of days that worker was employed by the company, whichever is less.⁵

Back pay is calculated at whichever is higher: your average rate of pay over your last three years of employment, or your final rate of pay. On top of wages, the employer owes the value of benefits you would have received during the violation period, including the cost of medical expenses that would have been covered under an employer-sponsored health plan.⁵

The employer also faces civil penalties of up to $500 for each day it failed to notify the required government entities. An employer can avoid the civil penalty entirely by paying all affected workers the full back pay and benefits owed within three weeks of the date the layoff, closure, or relocation was ordered.⁶

A few things reduce what the employer owes you. Wages the employer actually paid you during the violation period count against the back pay. Voluntary payments that were not already required by contract or company policy count as well, as do contributions the employer made to a third party or trustee for your benefit during the violation period. Accrued vacation pay is not an offset.⁷

How to Enforce the Right

You do not need to wait for a government agency. An affected individual, a local government, or an employee representative such as a union can file a civil lawsuit directly in court. A single plaintiff can also sue on behalf of other workers hit by the same violation, which functions much like a class action.⁸

If you win, the court can order the employer to pay your reasonable attorney’s fees as part of the costs. That provision is the practical reason workers can find counsel for these cases even when individual damages are modest: a lawyer taking the case knows fees are recoverable if the claim succeeds.⁸

1
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1400
2
Employment Development Department. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN)
3
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1401
4
Justia. California Code Labor Code Chapter 4 – Relocations, Terminations, and Mass Layoffs
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1402
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1403
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1402
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1404