AFL-CIO PUSHES STRONGER PLANT-CLOSING ‘WARN ACT’

Friday, May 23, 2008

(PAI)AFL-CIO PUSHES STRONGER PLANT-CLOSING ‘WARN ACT’
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

   WASHINGTON (PAI)--Only one-third of the plants covered by the nation’s 20-year-old plant-closing “Warn Act,” obey that law, and workers are hurt nationwide as a result, the AFL-CIO says.

   The law orders medium-sized and large companies to tell their workers 60 days before a shutdown, federation Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told senators on May 20. But it’s widely flouted and it covers only a quarter of U.S. firms, he added.

   The surprising data were the top topic of discussion at a Senate Labor Committee hearing, called to review the law’s performance and see if it needs improvement. Trumka emphatically said it did. So did all other witnesses, except for the GOP’s management-side labor lawyer.

   “The Warn Act was built out of the cataclysmic loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1980s,” Trumka said. “Since then, the wave of plant closings and off-shoring buffeting our economy has only gotten worse…Since 2000, more than 40,000 manufacturing establishments have closed their doors and now the plague of mass layoff has spread to the service sector,” he told Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has introduced legislation to strengthen the law.

   “Layoffs continue at a pace of 1.5 million impacted workers every year and almost half a million workers have been idled by mass layoffs in the first three months” of this year, Trumka said. The Warn Act covers mass layoffs as well as plant closings.

   But the Warn Act has big problems and “hasn’t lived up to the hopes” unions had when they pushed it through 20 years ago, Trumka said:

   * It covers too few workplaces--only those with at least 100 workers.
   * Only one-third of the employers it covers obey it when the time comes.
   * If the employer gets caught flouting it, the only fine is back pay and benefits the workers are owed. There have been only 226 cases of employer violations in 20 years, and half were thrown out because of the law’s exceptions, Trumka noted.
   * Workers get only 60 days notice of a plant closing, and the notice is required if at least 50 workers are laid off by the closing or mass layoffs of shifts of workers.
   * It lacks aid to workers facing the plant closing and needing to train for and find other jobs.

   That’s in contrast not just to other nations, but even to several states, Trumka

said. “Several states have adopted better laws, eliminating exceptions” in the federal
law for special circumstances, he noted. “California, Illinois and two other states have
cut the minimum number of people in a plant” for it to be covered by the Warn Act “and they’ve lengthened the notice the employers must give” of plant closings and layoffs.

   “Those two states also set up a safety net for the workers, while at the same time trying to find a buyer to see if the plant can be saved,” Trumka added. John Philo of the Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice testified that Great Britain’s plant closing law bars a shutdown unless detailed procedures to help the workers are followed, while Canada’s law establishes “mandatory” joint worker-management-government committees to help the workers when a shutdown is announced.

   The 1988 plant-closing law “was by no means comprehensive,” Trumka said. “It was a relatively modest measure requiring certain employers to give only two months notice before plant closings and mass layoffs. Its flaws were apparent” on the day it became law “as the result of concessions necessary” to get it through Congress.

   Brown’s bill (S 1792) toughens the Warn Act by doubling the back pay workers get employers break the law, require 90 days notice of a plant closing or mass layoff and increasing how many companies it covers, by extending it to all firms with at least 25 workers. Brown also would let state attorneys general sue if a lawbreaking firm.

   The remaining Democratic presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are co-sponsors of S 1792, as is ailing Labor Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

   The AFL-CIO supports Brown’s bill with one exception, spokeswoman Lane Windham said: It wants employers to give workers six months’ notice of plant closings and layoffs, not three.

   Predictably, the Republican witness opposed Brown’s bill. He claimed most employers follow the plant closing law, said tougher fines wouldn’t work and argued that employers genuinely are distressed when they have to close plants.

   Brown was skeptical. “About 15 years ago, a sheet-metal manufacturer in Delphus, Ohio gave workers 30-minutes’ notice. Many had been with the company more than 10 years,” he said. In another case, “workers at National Machinery in Tifflin, Ohio, filed a Warn Act lawsuit after employers announced mass layoffs without any notice.” Hundreds of workers lost their jobs, Brown added. They eventually got $375 each in a court-ordered agreement.

   “That kind of settlement hardly deters bad corporate behavior,” he commented.
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