Statement of Senator Barack Obama on HELP Committee Hearing on the WARN Act's 20th Anniversary
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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CONTACT: Michael Ortiz, 202 228 5566
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Barack Obama today submitted the following testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Plant Closings, Workers' Rights and the WARN Act's 20th Anniversary:
"I started my career on the south side of Chicago trying to help people in communities devastated by steel plant closings get back on their feet. One of the things I learned early on, and have seen over and over again, is that American workers who have committed themselves to their employers expect in return to be treated with a modicum of respect and fairness. Failing to give workers fair warning of an upcoming plant closing ignores their need to prepare for the transition and deprives their community of the opportunity to help prevent the closing.
"I know that you have heard the frustration of workers who are let go by email the day before a plant closes or are told when they come to work that their services are no longer necessary. Many of these workers support families that are living from pay check to pay check, squeezed by the demands of rising health care costs, the declining value of their homes, and wages that have been stagnant for decades. It adds insult to injury to close a plant without warning employees.
"There may be no stronger advocate for these workers than Senator Brown, and I thank you for holding this hearing and authoring legislation to strengthen the Worker Adjustment and Retraining and Notification Act (WARN). I fully support your efforts and look forward to helping you move the legislation through the process. We must give the WARN Act teeth to ensure that workers are not chewed up and spit out without a job or a paycheck.
"When I was a member of the Illinois Senate, I worked to strengthen enforcement of the existing WARN Act by requiring the Illinois Department of Employment Security to annually notify employers of their responsibilities under the WARN Act. But we must act at the federal level to close the loophole that allows employers to disregard the WARN Act without penalty.
"Congress passed the WARN Act in 1988 to give workers and communities two months' advance notice to adjust to an impending plant closing or layoff. And where employers have complied with the law, retraining and other readjustment efforts have a much greater chance to succeed than when such programs are rushed into place because there was no advance notice of a plant closing. But despite the WARN Act, employers have all too often failed to provide workers with that vital notice. The GAO has found recently that 24 percent of all layoffs are subject to WARN requirements, yet employers provided notice in approximately one-third of these situations. And courts have increasingly dismissed lawsuits brought by workers who have been unfairly denied notice.
"Senator Brown's FOREWARN Act would modernize and enhance the WARN Act's protections. I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this important legislation. It would reduce the mass layoff figure from 50 to 25 employees, and reduce the threshold for coverage of firms from 100 to 50 employees. The FOREWARN Act would also lengthen the notification period from 60 to 90 days, require employers to provide written notification to the Labor Secretary, and increase penalties for violations of the WARN Act from back pay to double back pay. Finally, the bill authorizes the Labor Department to enforce the law, and permits state attorneys general to pursue claims if the Labor Secretary fails to act within six months.
"These are long overdue improvements in the law. Workers and their communities have a right to know when they are facing a serious risk of a plant closing. Making that information available before the plant closes can, in the best case scenario, help communities come together to prevent the loss and, in the worst case scenario, help workers and communities prepare for the difficult transition to come. Basic fairness and respect for working men and women require that we pass the FOREWARN Act."