Workers Adjustment Retraining Notification Act

Layoffs loom in Matthews

About 125 construction employees are set to lose their jobs, as a Maryland-based building firm has filed papers with the state saying the company will close its Matthews office.

Structural Preservation Systems sent a letter to N.C. officials last week under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The law requires employers to notify the state of mass layoffs.

The company said it will permanently close its branch office on Matthews-Mint Hill Road, with layoffs of the 125 workers based there beginning within 30 days.The employees include skilled construction, field technicians, project managers, engineers and estimators, structural preservation systems said, and they were informed of the closure last week.

Cathy Ullery, head of corporate human resources, could not be reached Tuesday afternoon for comment. The company has more than a dozen offices nationwide.

Unemployment remains high in the county of Mecklenburg, with an unemployment rate of 11 percent in August and more than 50,000 people looking for work.

The construction sector has been hit hard as projects stalled. The latest data from the NC Employment Security Commission shows construction was the hardest-hit employment sector locally, with the biggest year-over-year decline in jobs.

In August, the ESC said the mining, logging and construction category lost 1,500 jobs in the Charlotte region compared to the same time a year ago, for a decline of 3.9 percent.

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Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN)

The Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (“WARN”) became effective on February 4, 1989.  WARN requires employers to give employees notice when an employment change is advanced.  The Act calls for at least sixty (60) days notice to employees who will experience employment loss either because of a plant closing or because of a scheduled mass layoff.

An employee experiences employment loss in any one of the following three scenarios:

WARN covers employers who have more than one hundred (100) employees.  Employees who work less than six (6) of the past twelve (12) months, as well as employees who work less than twenty (20) hours a week are not counted into this total.  Private for profit or non-profit, as well as public and quasi-public entities who operate in the commercial context are obligated under WARN to give their employees notice pending a plant closing or mass layoff.  Federal, State or local government entities are governed under WARN.  Hourly, salaried, managerial and supervisory employees are all entitled to the sixty (60) day notice.  Business partners however, are not entitled to the Act’s protections.

Employers of a temporary project are not required to give their employees notice prior to plant closings or mass layoffs.  Additionally, if the closing of the plant or mass layoff is the result of completion of a project, those workers are also not entitled to WARN’s protection.  The employees must have been hired with the understanding that their employment was conditional on the completion of the project.  An employer cannot label an ongoing project as temporary to avoid the requirements under the WARN act.    Additionally, striking employees are not entitled to notice when their actions lead to a lockout, which acts as an equivalent to a closing or mass layoff.  Non-striking employees who are adversely affected are entitled to notice.

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