AB 2530: Employment: Cal/WARN Act: plant closings and mass layoffs.

Existing law, the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act (Cal/WARN Act), among other things, prohibits an employer from ordering a mass layoff, relocation, or termination at a covered establishment unless, 60 days before the order takes effect, the employer gives written notice of the order to the employees affected by the order and to the Employment Development Department and certain local officials. Existing law requires the notice to contain specified information and makes an employer who fails to give the required notice liable to each employee entitled to notice who lost their employment for back pay and the value of the cost of any benefits to which the employee would have been entitled had their employment not been lost, as provided. Existing law also makes an employer subject to civil penalties, as provided, for each day of the employers violation. Existing law defines employer for these purposes to mean any person, as defined, who directly or indirectly owns and operates a covered establishment and defines covered establishment to mean any industrial or commercial facility or part thereof that employs, or has employed within the preceding 12 months, 75 or more persons.

This bill would add public agency to the definitions of employer and covered establishment, thereby making the Cal/WARN Act applicable to public agencies. The bill would, in the case of a sale of part or all of an employers business, make the seller responsible for providing the notice for any mass layoff, relocation, or termination up to and including the effective date of the sale, and make the purchaser responsible for providing the notice following the effective date of the sale.

The bill would make other technical and conforming changes.