When Hy-Vee unexpectedly dismissed 121 corporate employees in March, some questioned if the West Des Moines company violated the state and federal WARN Act provisions.
The grocer got around this accusation by saying it offered 102 of the mostly headquarters and IT employees retail store positions—some of the laid-off workers who spoke to Starting Line refute this claim—and that it only laid off 19 employees. That’s an important number and we’ll explain why shortly.
So what is the WARN Act and why should you care about it?
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act was passed by Congress in 1988. The bill required companies to give workers at least 60-days notice that they were losing their jobs during a mass layoff or plant closure. It was considered controversial at the time, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Iowa passed its WARN law in 2011 and it expanded the scope of the federal law. You can view the notification system online at Workforce Development’s website. There’s already been six major layoffs in Iowa this year that fell under the WARN Act, including at the Dubuque greyhound racetrack and the Siemens wind turbine plant in Fort Madison.
OK, so what do these laws do?
Basically, these WARN laws force companies to notify workers (or their union), the state and/or federal department of labor, and the appropriate body of the local government of impending job cuts in the case of mass layoffs or plant closures.
The notice has to contain a reason for...
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