Under what circumstance do the notice provisions of the WARN Act apply to a staffing firm?

The notice provisions of the WARN Act apply to a staffing firm particularly when 50 or more employees are terminated at a single customer location. The WARN Act, which stands for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, is designed to provide workers with advance notice of mass layoffs or plant closings.

In the context of staffing firms, this means that if a staffing agency's employees are placed on assignment at a client location and the client decides to lay off 50 or more of those employees, the staffing firm must adhere to the WARN Act's requirements. This remains true even though the staffing firm is not the direct employer of those employees since they are the ones overseeing the employment relationship for the client’s project.

While options centered around project completion or downsizing do involve employment changes, they do not necessarily trigger the WARN Act provisions unless they result in the specific condition of mass termination at a single location. Similarly, employee requests to leave assignments do not establish a mass layoff situation either, thus not requiring notice under the WARN Act.