ShareThisWith the weight of 250,000 unemployed Minnesotans resting on his shoulders, Anthony Alongi, director of the state's dislocated-worker program, has had one heck of a recession.
But neither Alongi nor the state's newly unemployed are getting much help from job-cutting companies or from a federal law that's supposed to ease the shock of big layoffs.
The Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires employers to give their employees and local government 60 days' notice before a mass layoff -- 50 people or more from a single location. But there is no practical way for government to make sure that employers follow this law. Aside from class-action lawsuits filed by wronged employees, the law goes mostly unpoliced.
The dislocated-worker program, housed under Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development, gets the unemployed back to work by hooking them up with job counselors and training programs. The idea behind the WARN Act is to give Alongi's program enough time to prepare employees for a new job before they are laid off from their old one.
"There are a lot of employees and employers who don't know about the WARN Act, flat-out," Alongi said.
If a company does not give proper notice before a mass layoff, it's expected to pay employee salaries for every day they were not properly notified up to 60 days. For example, if a company laid off employees and only gave them a 20-day notice, it would be required to pay those employees 40 days' salary.
But Alongi said he doesn't have the time or resources to enforce the WARN Act, which was enacted in 1989. He oversees a rapid-response team of five people that informs laid-off workers about the dislocated worker program and encourages eligible people to enroll. Although he occasionally sends letters to businesses who might be in violation of the WARN Act, his team is more about facilitating than enforcement.
The federal Department of Labor has no authority over the law, according to the act.
A main concern with WARN is its variety of broad exemptions, such as if the business is considered "faltering" and a mass layoff would improve its financial position or if the company stumbles upon reasonably unforeseeable business circumstances -- as many companies did in the last year as the credit market froze and the recession deepened. Also, companies are not required to file a WARN notice if they offer buyouts. The law only applies to businesses that employ 100 people or more.
Since 2006, Minnesota has had about 250 mass layoffs but only 116 WARN filings, according to data collected by the dislocated worker program.
"We really do rely on voluntary compliance," he said. "We get more from these businesses if we go in with an open hand than a fist."
For Alongi, compliance means a business comes to him, tells him about the upcoming layoffs well ahead of time, and allows the rapid-response team to come on-site to tell employees about the dislocated worker program. Sometimes, companies will even allow employees to attend sessions while on the clock.
The worst-case scenario is when a business keeps quiet and Alongi learns about a mass layoff by reading about it in the newspaper.
From December to February, Alongi said, more than 8,000 Minnesota workers were left jobless because of mass layoffs. Alongi described it as "the worst time the program has ever faced with the economy." Across the nation during the same three months, 9,445 mass layoffs affected more than 958,0000 workers.
Several states, such as California and New York, have decided to write their own, beefed-up versions of the WARN Act. In New York, employers must give their employees 90 days notice before a mass layoff.
Similarly, Congress is kicking around amendments to the WARN Act -- called the FOREWARN Act -- that would require 90 days notice and redefine a mass layoff as 25 people instead of 50.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Minneapolis Star Tribune
