"Like so much in the labor area, as a practical matter the heated battle over the WARN Act became much ado about nothing."

Alan B. Krueger with a post about Labor Relations on Economix:

"The Republic Windows case was particularly newsworthy because the company’s problems involved the curtailment of credit by Bank of America after the bank had received considerable subsidies from the federal government. An effective sit-in and public relations campaign were able to shame Bank of America into extending limited credit to Republic Windows to provide its workers severance pay and limited benefits.

But the bigger picture of this saga should not be missed: companies frequently close without giving their employees the required 60 days of advance notice.

A seminal study by John Addison and McKinley Blackburn found that displaced workers were hardly more likely to receive 60 days’ advance notice of a layoff after the WARN Act took effect than they were before it went into effect.

A subsequent report by the General Accounting Office found that only one quarter of mass layoffs and plant closings were subject to the WARN Act advance-notice requirements, and even more disturbing, “Employers provided notice for approximately one-third of layoffs and closures that appear subject to WARN requirements.”

Thus, the law applies in only a minority of plant closings and mass layoffs, and apparently it is widely violated, with little consequence, when it does apply. Indeed, it is even possible that in the Republic Windows case the company might be able to argue that it qualified for one of the various exceptions in WARN.

Like so much in the labor area, as a practical matter the heated battle over the WARN Act became much ado about nothing. Relatively few additional workers were warned about pending layoffs and plant closings as a result of WARN. Indeed, the available evidence makes one wonder why so many employer groups fought so hard to oppose the law if it ultimately turned out to hardly affect the way employers operated. "

My own belief is that much of this kind of legislation is symbolic, and is a test of power between interest groups, namely Organized Labor in the Democratic Party and the Employers represented by the GOP. That doesn't mean that issues aren't involved, and such symbolic contests are actually quite important. But, in real life, workers and employers generally have good reasons to work things out themselves. Such laws can be useful, however, in preventing egregious abuses, and, quite frankly, should be enforced.