A NYS WARN notice is the written warning that most private New York employers must give at least 90 days before a plant closing, mass layoff, relocation, or significant cut to work hours. It has to reach affected employees, their union if they have one, the state Department of Labor, the Local Workforce Development Board, the chief elected official of the local government and school district, and the police, fire, and EMS agencies that serve the site. If your employer skips the notice or sends it late, you are entitled to back pay and the value of lost benefits for the days of notice you should have received.
When Your Employer Has to Send One
Four kinds of workforce events trigger the 90-day notice requirement, each measured at a single employment site rather than across the whole company.
Plant Closing
A permanent or temporary shutdown of a site, or of one or more operating units within a site, that causes 25 or more full-time employees to lose their jobs during any 30-day period.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-a – Definitions Temporary shutdowns count; what matters is the effect on workers, not the label the employer uses.
Mass Layoff
At least 25 full-time employees laid off when that group makes up at least 33 percent of the site’s full-time workforce, or 250 or more full-time employees laid off regardless of percentage, in any 30-day period.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-a – Definitions
Relocation
A move of all or substantially all operations to a new location 50 or more miles away, if 25 or more full-time employees suffer an employment loss as a result. If the employer offers you a transfer to the new site with no more than a six-month break and you accept within 30 days, you are not counted as having lost employment.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-a – Definitions
Covered Hours Reduction
A cut of more than 50 percent in work hours during each month of any six consecutive months, affecting either 25 employees who make up 33 percent of the full-time workforce or 250 employees regardless of percentage.2New York State Department of Labor. WARN For Businesses: Frequently Asked Questions This catches situations where you keep your job on paper but lose most of your paycheck.
An employer cannot avoid the law by splitting one big layoff into smaller rounds. Employment losses within any 90-day period that individually fall short of the thresholds but together reach them are treated as a single event unless the employer can prove the actions were genuinely unrelated.3New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-E – Determinations With Respect to Employment Loss
Which Employers Have to Follow the Law
The New York WARN Act applies to private businesses with 50 or more employees (not counting part-time workers), or 50 or more employees who together work at least 2,000 hours per week.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-a – Definitions A part-time employee is one who averages fewer than 20 hours per week or who has worked for the employer fewer than six of the last 12 months.
Government employers are not covered. That includes federal, state, and local agencies as well as school districts, so public-sector workers cannot bring a WARN claim under this law.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-a – Definitions
Who Gets the Notice and What It Says
The 90-day written notice has to go to every one of the following, and missing even one recipient can put the employer in violation:
- Each affected employee, and any union that represents them.
- The New York State Department of Labor.
- The Local Workforce Development Board for the area where the site sits.
- The chief elected official of the local government and of the school district where the site operates.
- The police, fire, and EMS providers that serve the site.4New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-B – Notice
The notice itself must identify the employer, the site, what is going to happen, when the first separations will occur, and the job titles and number of affected employees, along with a company contact person for follow-up questions.
One timing rule often catches workers off guard. If a layoff was first announced as six months or less but ends up running longer, the employer must send a new notice as soon as it is reasonably foreseeable that the layoff will exceed six months. Without that updated notice, the entire layoff is treated as an employment loss subject to the full 90-day requirement.5New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 860-d
Exceptions That Let an Employer Shorten the Notice
In a handful of narrowly defined situations, an employer can give less than 90 days’ notice, or in extreme cases none at all. Even then, the employer has to give as much notice as circumstances allow and include a written explanation of why the period was shortened.6New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-C – Exceptions The employer always carries the burden of proving an exception applies.
- Faltering company (plant closings only). The employer was actively seeking capital or business that would have avoided or postponed the shutdown, and reasonably believed that announcing the closing would scare off the financing. Courts read this exception narrowly.6New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-C – Exceptions
- Unforeseeable business circumstances. Conditions the employer could not have reasonably predicted at the time the 90-day notice would have been due, such as a major client suddenly ending a contract, a strike at a key supplier, a public health emergency, or an unexpected government shutdown order.7New York State Department of Labor. 12 NYCRR Part 921
- Natural disaster. Floods, earthquakes, storms, and similar events.6New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-C – Exceptions
- Physical calamity, terrorism, or war. No notice is required when the event is caused directly by one of these.4New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-B – Notice
- Temporary project or facility. Employees hired with the understanding that the work was limited to a specific project or temporary facility are not entitled to notice when that work ends.6New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-C – Exceptions
- Strike or lockout. A closing or layoff that results from a strike, or from a lockout not designed to evade the WARN Act.6New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-C – Exceptions
What a Late or Missing Notice Is Worth
An employer that violates the New York WARN Act owes each affected worker back pay and the value of lost benefits for the period the employer failed to provide proper notice. The commissioner of labor can investigate, collect, and distribute those amounts to the workers harmed.8New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 860-F – Powers of the Commissioner Because the New York notice window is 90 days, the potential back-pay exposure runs longer than under the 60-day federal WARN Act.
If you believe you should have received 90 days’ notice and did not, you can report the potential violation to the New York State Department of Labor.
WARN in Bankruptcy
A Chapter 11 filing does not wipe out WARN obligations. If the notice should have gone out before the bankruptcy petition was filed, workers’ WARN claims generally fall into fourth-priority unsecured treatment under bankruptcy law, with a per-employee cap. If the layoff happens after the petition is filed, the WARN liability is treated as a higher-priority administrative expense, which gives workers a better chance of actually being paid. The same exceptions apply inside bankruptcy as outside it, and the employer still has to prove the circumstances were truly unforeseeable at the point notice would have been due.
How to Look Up a WARN Notice
Every WARN notice filed in New York goes on the Department of Labor’s public WARN Dashboard.9New York State Department of Labor. WARN Dashboard You can search by business name or filter by year, industry, county, and workforce development board region, and individual notices download as PDFs. If you cannot find a notice you expected to see, email the WARN team at WARN@labor.ny.gov.
What to Do After You Get One
A WARN notice is not a termination letter. It tells you your job will end or your hours will drop within 90 days, and that window exists so you can plan. Once the state Department of Labor and the Local Workforce Development Board receive the filing, they coordinate rapid response services covering unemployment insurance, workforce training, and other transition help.10New York State Department of Labor. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN)
Don’t wait for someone to reach out. File for unemployment insurance as soon as you are eligible, start updating your resume, and look into retraining programs through your local workforce development board. If the notice came late, or never came at all, flag it to the Department of Labor so your claim for back pay and benefits can be reviewed.