When hoteliers are considering purchasing, selling or remodeling hotels, one of the most overlooked issues during the due diligence and planning phases relates to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
This statute requires covered employers to provide 60 days’ notice to employees, union representatives, state agencies and localities before carrying out plant closings or mass layoffs.[1] Congress intentionally devised WARN to provide affected employees adequate time to prepare for employment loss, seek and obtain alternative employment, and/or arrange for skill training or retraining to compete successfully in the job market.
Accordingly, hotel buyers, sellers, owners and management companies should be mindful of WARN’s obligations and be aware of potential liability for failure to provide written notice.
WARN’s Threshold Requirements
To fall under WARN, a hotel must employ at least 100 full-time employees, or employ 100 or more full-time and part-time employees who work at least 4,000 hours per week (exclusive of overtime). In determining whether a hotel has the requisite number of employees, hotels must count temporary employees and individuals who are temporarily laid off or on a leave of absence but who have a reasonable expectation of recall toward the threshold number of “full-time” employees.
In contrast, part-time employees are excluded from determining if a hotel satisfies the threshold levels. Part-time employees are individuals who work on average fewer than 20 hours per week, or who have been employed fewer than six of the 12 months preceding the date on which notice is required (e.g., recent hires working full-time schedules and seasonal workers).
Covered Employees and Content of Notices
Hotels covered by WARN must provide 60 days’ notice of a qualifying termination event to each hourly and salaried employee, manager and supervisor who may reasonably expect to experience employment losses. This notice requirement applies to both full-time and part-time employees.
Although temporary employees are counted for purposes of determining coverage under WARN, they are not entitled to advance notice so long as they were hired with the clear understanding that their employment was limited in duration.
The required content of written WARN notifications vary depending on whether the hotel is notifying employees, union representatives or government entities. Nevertheless, common to all notifications are (1) a description of the termination event and a statement as to whether the event is expected to be permanent or temporary; (2) the expected date(s) when the layoffs will commence; and (3) the name and telephone number of a hotel official to contact for further information.
Triggering WARN Notice Requirements
Fundamentally, three types of termination events trigger WARN notification requirements where 50 or more full-time employees experience employment losses. Those events are:
- A plant closing that is a permanent or temporary shutdown of a “single site of employment” or one or more facilities or distinct operating units within a single site of employment that results in an employment loss during any 30-day period for 50 or more full-time employees.
- A mass layoff (exclusive of a plant closing) of at least 50 full-time employees where the employment loss consists of at least 33 percent of the full-time employees at the single site.
- A mass layoff of 500 or more full-time employees at a single site of employment, regardless of its proportion of the total employment at the site or if the employment loss is part of a plant closing.
Additionally, WARN defines “employment loss” as involuntary separations of workers exceeding six months; or a reduction in hours worked of at least 50 percent during each month for a six-month period. Any employment losses during a 30-day period are considered a single event for the purposes of the WARN Act.
Notably, even if a hotel’s initial terminations during a 30-day period do not constitute a covered termination event, WARN may be retroactively applied under certain circumstances. If two or more groups of employees suffer employment losses at a single site of employment during a 90 day period, and each group alone does not meet the threshold employee levels, the groups can be aggregated and treated as a single event.
Thus, when smaller layoffs that occur within 90 days collectively satisfy the WARN threshold level, each affected employee must receive 60 days’ notice prior to his or her date of termination. To avoid treating group terminations as a single event, hotels must establish that (1) the employment losses are unrelated and distinct; and (2) they have not structured or phased the terminations to avoid the WARN requirements.
Additionally, if a hotel announces a non-WARN covered layoff of six-month or less but subsequently extends the layoff past six months, the hotel may have WARN notification responsibilities. Unless the hotel can establish that the layoff extension was due to unforeseeable circumstances at the time of the original layoff, the matter is treated as if notice was required for the original layoff.
Finally, plant closing or mass layoff stemming from a relocation or consolidation of all or part of a hotel’s business is not considered an “employment loss,” if before the event (1) the hotel offers to transfer an employee to another site within a reasonable commuting distance and not more than a six-month break in employment occurs (regardless of whether the employee accepts or rejects the offer); or (2) the employee accepts a transfer to another site (regardless of distance) with no more than a six-month break in employment, within 30 days of the hotel’s offer or the closing or layoff, whichever is later.
Notification Exceptions
The WARN Act specifies exceptions in which hotels may provide less than 60 days’ notice to employees, state agencies and localities affected by an employment loss. The primary exceptions are:
- Faltering Company Exception. Hotels can provide reduced notice for plant closings — but not mass layoffs — where they are actively seeking new capital or business to prevent the closing, have a realistic chance of obtaining sufficient funds or new business, and believe in good faith that giving notice would prevent it from obtaining the necessary capital or business to remain open.
- Unforeseeable Business Circumstances Exception. Hotels can provide reduced notice where plant closings and mass layoffs are caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time notice would otherwise have been required (e.g., swift onset of a deep economic downturn, a nonnatural disaster).
- Natural Disaster Exception. Hotels can provide reduced notice if a natural disaster, such as hurricane, flood or earthquake, directly causes a plant closing or mass layoff. Although this exception does not apply when the natural disaster indirectly causes the closing or layoff, the unforeseen business circumstances exception above might.
If the hotel provides less than 60 days’ notice under one of the aforementioned exceptions, it must explain in the notice the reason for the reduced notice period.
Who Must Give Notice in Shutdown: Owner or Operator?
Although hotel owners more often decide to shut down operations permanently rather than the managing entities that operate the hotels, the managing entity bears the primary responsibility for giving WARN notices.[2]
Accordingly, in negotiating management agreements, prudent hotel managers should secure protection from the owner against WARN liability for a permanent shutdown. That protection may be requiring the employer to notify the manager of a shutdown with sufficient time for the manager to comply with the WARN Act and securing indemnification against WARN liability if the owner gives insufficient notice to allow for WARN compliance.
Sale of Hotels
The general rule under WARN is that the responsibility to notify affected employees of a mass layoff or plant closing shifts at the time of sale. In this regard, when part or all of a business is sold and WARN’s threshold requirements are satisfied, the seller is responsible for providing notices to affected employees for any closing or layoff, up to and including the effective date of the sale. After the effective date of the sale, however, the buyer is responsible for providing notice for any such event.
Under WARN, however, employees who are merely transferred from the seller to buyer as part of the sale are not deemed to have suffered an employment loss.[3] In other words, the obligation to notify affected employees of a mass layoff is not triggered by the actual sale but by the employment loss.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s corresponding regulations further provide that employees who remain the sellers’ employees until the effective date of the sale and then are terminated, even if on account of the sale, will be treated as if they are employed by the buyer thereafter.
Thus, as the seller’s employees are treated as employed by the buyer after the sale, the seller will have no WARN responsibilities in connection with the post-sale termination of employees incident to the sale. The buyer will be responsible for WARN compliance if it elects not to retain those employees.[4]
If the seller has knowledge that a significant number of employees might be terminated within the first 60 days after the sale is consummated and the seller can identify those affected employees, the seller, although not required to do so, may send WARN notices to the affected employees as the agent of the buyer.[5] The regulations also encourage the parties to discuss and arrange who will bear the WARN obligations and include the specifics in the purchase agreement with appropriate indemnity language.
For the seller to avoid WARN obligations and liabilities, the seller should, to the extent possible, postpone any terminations incident to the sale until after the effective date of the transaction. In addition, a seller should notify employees who are laid off prior to completion of the transaction if their layoffs are temporary, (i.e., expected to be for less than six months), and that the buyer expects to hire some or all of them.
Under these circumstances, short-term layoffs incident to the sale do not constitute an employment loss under WARN and do not trigger WARN notice requirements. The notice obligations would only arise if the buyer fails to rehire a sufficient number of the seller’s employees. In this case, however, the buyer is solely responsible for giving any WARN notices.
It would therefore be prudent for the seller to obtain a provision in the purchase agreement that indemnifies the seller and obligates the buyer to comply with WARN under such circumstances. If, of course, the seller assumes WARN obligations, then it must also comply with WARN’s specific notice requirements.
Enforcement and Penalties
Federal courts enforce WARN through private right of actions, as the U.S. Department of Labor lacks investigative and enforcement authority for the act. Since district court lack injunctive authority to stop a plant closing or mass layoff, a plaintiff’s remedies are limited to statutory damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and/or civil penalties.
In sum, in light of WARN’s potential for significant financial exposure, hoteliers should carefully plan in advance any notice requirements prior to the purchase, sale or remodel of a hotel.
[1] See 29 U.S.C. §§ 2101-2109 (1988). Many states have mini-WARN laws which may provide more generous notice to employees; therefore, it is critical that hoteliers check state law in addition to the federal notice provisions under WARN.
[2] See Local 217, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union v. MHM Inc., 976 F.2d 805 (2d Cir. 1992) (finding the hotel’s management company to be liable under WARN for firing its staff in the wake of the hotel’s closing, even though the hotel owner ordered the shutdown).
[3] See Wiltz v. MG Transport Servs., 128 F.3d 957 (6th Cir. 1997) (holding that the actual sale was not a WARN event and that employees who the buyer retained did not fall under WARN).
[4] See Local 54, Hotel Employees International Union v. Elsinore Shore Associates, 724 F. Supp. 333 (D.N.J. 1989) (holding that whoever is the employer at the time of the plant closing or mass layoff is responsible for notifying the employees 60 days in advance).
[5] 29 C.F.R. § 639.4(1).