Constitutional Law

Time To Restructure Laws Regulating Notice of Layoffs?

Some labor experts tell The New York Times that the bleak economic landscape and increasing layoffs should spur lawmakers to consider revising laws that require businesses to give notice of job cuts.

Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley told the times that 'transparency and decency' should be the goal of laws aimed at protecting workers. 'The issue becomes all the more pressing in this downward economic spiral.' The newspaper notes that increasingly large companies are finding ways to cut jobs without adhering to the strictures of notification laws, such as the WARN Act, which requires only certain businesses to give workers 60 days' notice of job cuts. The WARN Act and some state laws governing notice of job losses may not apply to smaller businesses or not require employers to give notice of a small number of job cuts.  

The law, The Times reports, is 'site-specific,' thereby allowing some companies to give much less, or no, notice to employees that their jobs are being terminated. The news on the nation's economic outlook continues to look dire for workers. The Labor Department reported this morning that the nation's unemployment is at 8.1 percent. Tula Connell on the AFL-CIO's News Now Blog noted that, 'As always, the official unemployment rate doesn't capture the full picture. A more comprehensive measure of unemployment – including those who a job but have stopped looking, as well as those who are working part-time because they can't find a full-time job – is at 14.8 percent. This amounts to 22.5 million workers who are struggling to find a decent job in this economy.'

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).