Do all layoffs need a WARN? I've heard now twice that a few people have been laid off in the past three or four weeks with no warning. No WARN, no announcement, no publicity (since it's only two or three people in both cases...) Is that legal? If it is, is that our future? Surgical cuts all the time instead of a major round every once in a while?
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At the company I worked for, they were called Stealth Layoffs. They stay under the limit, do a few here and there. Another tactic used to get around the WARN Act and layoff/severance, was security violations. I was stuck at work on a call one night. It was about 7PM. All of a sudden about 100 people come through the cubes inspecting everything, taking pictures, and marking down on paper. I asked what the guy was doing and he said they were here doing security audits. Luckily for my cubemates I was still there or they would have been written up. They wrote people up on the stupidest things, but everyone signed the Business Policy that had to be done each year. One of the biggest was phone numbers of customers without written permission from them to be public. A few weeks later employees and managers were notified of "all" the violations. They used it as the reason for getting rid of people without severance. Because they failed security, they could be fired. There was no recourse, no one to escalate to, or anything. Everyone signed the policy and accepted the terms of immediate dismissal if exceeding 3 security violations in a year. They did it small enough so no one really knew until after a few days. Individuals had badges turned off so they could not get in the building and were given a time to clear out their desk after hours with Security.
Every quarter they stay just under the 500 limit for each business unit.
This has always been a thing. Companies know what the limit is... and most generally seem to steer clear of it unless they have no other choice. That's just business. Get away with exactly what you can, I guess.
A different company I worked with has laid off well over 500 people recently. A WARN-worthy event if done all at once, most likely. Not so much, when they handled it by doing 90+ day waves of reduction, making sure never to affect more than 50 workers, or more than 33.33% at any given worksite, or more than 500 total at any given worksite in a 90-day period.
The guidelines are public, look them up to see what's up. Oh, sometimes there are even exceptions to those rules, and even some more exceptions with the pandemic in effect... so you have to take all of that into account.
Like I say, the companies are generally well aware and their legal team will make sure they don't cross the line unless they really need to do that.