Big changes were recently announced to address the difficult post-pandemic work climate, still plagued by business closures, staff reductions and remote work. To that end, the state government launched a platform to help ensure compliance with the New York State Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as the WARN Act.
This rule basically requires that with 90 days notice, companies with more than 50 workers, provide early warning of closures, relocations, reductions and layoffs to all affected employees.
This “advance notice” obligation provides employees, their families, and communities reasonable time to transition, seek new employment, and enter job training programs with the assistance of the New State Department of Labor. York (NYSDOL).
In this direction, Governor Kathy Hochul, in the midst of a whole movement of technological modernization, by various state government agencies, reported that both companies and workers will have a more “friendly” web portal to do the WARN Act procedures. .
“This new portal and the regulatory enhancements to the WARN Act are much-needed steps to reduce the administrative burden on businesses and provide New Yorkers in need with comprehensive support,” Governor Hochul said.
everything faster
The new, improved online tool will give companies the ability to file layoff notices in a faster and more streamlined manner, and most importantly, will give workers more time to transition to a new job.
New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon says “early warnings” help shorten the time it takes employees to collect unemployment insurance benefits, thereby reducing associated employer liability with layoffs.
“We want to make sure that each affected employee has every advantage possible to quickly secure new careers or new jobs,” he said.
The launch of the new WARN Act portal is part of NYSDOL’s ongoing 4-year modernization plan to reduce call volume, improve the worker experience and quickly connect New Yorkers to unemployment insurance benefits.
In theory, once a WARN Act notice is sent, NYSDOL’s Division of Workforce and Employment Solutions works with local workforce development boards, community stakeholders, and businesses to connect affected workers with new careers and job opportunities.
The Governor also announced proposed substantive changes to the WARN Act regulations to address how the new remote work scenario affects compliance with this rule. In addition, the language is simplified, to ensure that companies better understand their obligations.
According to the laws in force in New York, companies or corporations that have more than 50 employees that do not notify reductions or closures within the required periods, run the risk of being forced to pay salaries and benefits to employees. Also, face a civil penalty.
Post Pandemic Economy: Jobs Wanted
During the pandemic, NYSDOL received an unprecedented number of WARN Act notice filings, which increased from 430 filings affecting 27,858 workers in 2019 to 2,170 filings affecting 240,001 workers in 2020.
To be sure, these official numbers describe possibly only a minuscule side of the post-pandemic employment reality.
After exactly three years since the economy of the country and the world began to collapse due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, to date, some business and retail sectors in New York still do not show significant signs of recovery.
The most important data of this economic fall has to do precisely with the loss of hundreds of jobs. And the worst news is that there is no hope of recovery from this closing trend this year.
According to an X-ray of the job market crisis, specifically in the Big Apple, published by The New School, of the 950,000 jobs that were lost at the beginning of 2020, more than 300,000 have still not been recovered.
“This economic impact fell disproportionately on workers in industries characterized by face-to-face work, such as restaurants, retail, hotels, construction, arts and manufacturing,” the report states.
Another finding is that the losses of the largest number of jobs due to this fatality have been concentrated in Manhattan, where 75% of the vacancies are counted in the specific case of New York City.
We have to wait
There is another devastating angle that this research shows: The city is not expected to return to its level of employment in March 2020, since projections suggest that it will not be until the last quarter of 2024 that the Big Apple can recover its level of occupancy. labor. That is, five years after this public health crisis shocked the lives of New Yorkers.
In the very specific case of Manhattan, job positions in the retail and lodging and restaurant sectors suffered as tourism plummeted and many office workers, of various ranks, turned to remote work.
In the first three months of 2023, in some commercial areas of the city, large retail businesses continue to close or reduce their payrolls and corporate centers that never opened.
All of the above adds a more or less close photograph of the bulky unemployment statistics. But only for official records. There are other cracks that will hardly be reflected in any record.
“Without notice or protest”
For example, the Dominican cleaning worker, Ana Figueredo, 40, provided services for an office maintenance company in several towers in Lower Manhattan. She now survives by cleaning some houses. Nothing was the same. Not for her. Not even for her companions.
“What happens is that the news only comes out when they fire executives from large corporations and reduce large payrolls. But there is an account that nobody is taking up here in New York. And it is that with the closure of these corporate offices and large businesses, at the same time, thousands of poor families also suffer ”.
Ana points out that in her case, the cleaning contractor managed to shut down their operations without “notice or protest”, although she estimates that they were at least in charge of an “army” of more than 100 employees.
“For those of us who have papers, obviously we were able to collect and receive our stimulus checks. But due to the pandemic, most companies closed without being able to notify anyone because it was an emergency. But I think of the thousands of people, including many colleagues, who, because they are not legal, have no right to anything.”
The islander comments that before there were hundreds of offices in New York City, to do cleaning and maintenance from Monday to Monday. Thousands of people to serve coffee, bring a lunch. And that at night, they had a drink in a bar.
“Who did that job?” he wondered.
The immigrant also remembers that thousands of restaurants and cafeterias were full of these professionals at noon, who now work at home, because many offices closed.
“The pandemic put an end to all that. Wherever you put your eyes there is a closed store, the businesses are smaller, because there are not as many tourists coming as before. And behind the story of thousands of families who are unemployed and have never been notified of anything, ”he said.
What the quisqueyana refers to, in her words, and in her experience, seems to reveal more than a personal opinion.
Indeed, the ability of professional office workers to work remotely continues to have a pronounced impact on employment in several face-to-face industries in the first quarter of 2023.
These industries previously served one million Manhattan office workers, in restaurants, cafeterias, retail stores, bars, and entertainment venues.
Before the pandemic, 86% of the city’s remote work industry jobs were in Manhattan.
“No kind of labor justice”
When it is emphasized in the academic study of The New School that the “face-to-face” service companies were the ones affected, it is not difficult to conclude that this conclusion also comes from remembering that the African-American and Hispanic communities continue to be, three years later, the most punished.
New York City’s unemployment rate was 6.1% in the third quarter of 2022, well above the nation’s 3.5%.
“Black workers have an unemployment rate of 9.8%, compared to 3.5% for white workers,” the analysis highlights.
The Ecuadorian community leader, Walter Sinche, founder of the International Ecuadorian Alliance in Queens, puts “over the coals”, perhaps the other most vulnerable side of New York’s work culture, at a time when new waves of South American migrants continue to seek opportunities in New York .
“We have thousands coming in, just looking to get by on anything. And what we already saw before and during the pandemic, now we feel more seriously: scams and labor abuse of undocumented workers who do not even pay the legal minimum. If ways are not sought to legalize these communities, it would be difficult for us to talk at some point that some type of labor justice reaches them, ”he concluded.
Warning! The Warn Act numbers:
- A private business must have 50 or more employees to be required by the New York Department of Labor to issue a closing or restructuring warning to its workers.
- 90 days “before” is the legal deadline to give this warning, otherwise the company could face sanctions from the New York government.
- A $500 civil penalty per day for a Warn Act violation could face employers, who could also be liable for back wages and other benefits for 60 days. you were
More details:
To learn more about WARN, read the NYSDOL WARN fact sheet.