One Site or Many? How the WARN Act Defines a Single Site of Employment

When a company announces layoffs at several locations, one question decides whether the federal WARN Act even applies: do those locations count as one site of employment, or several? The Act's thresholds — 100 or more full-time workers, or 50 to 99 workers making up at least a third of the site's workforce — are measured site by site, not company-wide. So the definition of a "single site of employment" can be the difference between a required 60-day notice and no notice at all.

What the regulation says

The federal regulation, 20 CFR 639.3(i), starts with the simple case: a single site of employment is a single location. But it goes further. A group of contiguous locations that form a campus or industrial park counts as one site, and so do separate facilities across the street from each other.…