Anyone else wonder why BK never submits any WARN notices?
18 replies (most recent on top)
@3nrq,
Thanks for letting me know that's incorrect. I'll be sure to let the nys dol know since I copied and pasted it from their website.
Totally incorrect. From your made up definition we are in violation of the WARN act with darn near every little layoff. You should contact legal, get the facts, come back here with facts.
How can so many people get so many fact wrong?
The WARN Act applies to private businesses with 50 or more full-time employees in New York State. It covers:
Closings affecting 25 or more employees
Mass layoffs involving 25 or more full-time employees (if the 25 or more employees make up at least 33% of all the employees at the site)
Mass layoffs involving 250 or more full-time employees
Helpful to actually read the act. It’s either 500 at a single location in a 30 day period or 50-499 when the number affected is 33% or more the company. Pretty easy to avoid, just space it out geographically and over time.
Firing is totally different than being layed off.
Firing is termination for cause. However the Bank was very gracious under Todd as he provided SUB to people who clearly should have been termination with cause.
I’d certainly expect Robin to displace non-performers WITHOUT a package. The last two or 3 years generated a lot of slackers and there essentially no layoffs to speak of.
There are two reasons why we don’t have to announce under the WARN act although we only need one.
First it applies only to layoffs 5% or greater. Despite the whining here we’ve never even come anywhere close to that in the last 22 years, even if you add the spaced out quarterly layoffs. So much for the hysteria here.
Second we offer an extremely lucrative Supplemental Unemployment (SUB) package which negates the WARN responsible. While the SUB has been gradually reduced it still is so generous that most all employees with at least 15 years are hoping for it.
@2sxl, why do you say they aren't required? Specifically.
Why would you expect the bank to issue WARN notices for our layoffs?
They’re not required and we give an excellent SUB package.
“It depends upon what the definition of what “is” is.”
“Amazingly BNY HR can divide # of layoffs/total employees to circumvent hitting that threshold.”.
Yes, algebra is amazing and it must have been a rough 3 years for you.
Any other Internet Randos have their own unique interpretations of the rather easy to understand WARN act?
@nuw,
Where does it say that, specifically? I've read quite a bit of the law and there is ZERO mention of SUB pay. They mention severance could mandated as punishment for failure to report but that's the only text that resembles anything about payouts.
One of the biggest reasons for the WARN act is to give people and agencies time to see if they could help prevent the reductions. Offering SUB packages doesn't help that at all, in fact it just costs the company more which they'll have to make up for by canning more people.
So much wrong information is rampant on this site. The actual reason they are not obligated to file a WARN act is because they offer a nice sub package. Suggest people read up on the WARN act to understand the reason it was implemented.
The beauty of percentages is that they truly reflect the relative severity of the layoff. 7th grade algebra can be your friend if you let it or your worse enemy. If it helps, these are relatively good times from a layoff perspective with any sense of history.
It’s a simple answer, one which all here are well aware. It works like this:
Managers with loose lips sink our ship with rumors of a 5% layoff. Dense subordinates (yes, I understand that it’s redundant) leak to their favorite trusted friends and confidants and it becomes a 10% layoff. On this board it becomes “the biggest layoff ever.”
However, it does remain a sub 5% layoff, and small layoffs aren’t subject to the WARN act. Our largest and only significant layoff in the last 5-7years was Scharf’s August 2018 layoff and it too was not considered to require a WARN act.
For reasons known only to the madding crowd, small layoffs inspire more fear than large layoffs.
Someday we’ll have a major layoff. Let’s all relax and do our jobs in the meantime.
The percentage only applies to smaller sites. I guess it's more how you define a site. We certainly fire more than 250 people within a 6 month period.
There is a certain threshold of % of employees fired that requires filing a WARN notice (5%?). Amazingly BNY HR can divide # of layoffs/total employees to circumvent hitting that threshold. Other financial layoffs (BlackRock, CSFB etc) dont trigger WARN filing but it is leaked to press and it's actually newsworthy. No one had ever heard about this website until a Pittsburgh reporter found it when they had layoffs there.
They keep them small enough so they don’t have to. A constant stream of small pools of people.