PRESS RELEASE:
U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer Monday detailed a gaping loophole in the WARN Act that permitted the Friendly’s Corporation to heartlessly shut down 15 Upstate locations overnight, including 4 in Western New York, and lay-off hundreds of employees without so much as a day’s notice.
“The way by which Friendly’s left their workers across Upstate high-and-dry isn’t just something we should lament, it’s something we should address – by closing the Friendly’s loophole that allowed this company to fire scores of valuable employees without a moment’s notice. If these women and men worked in a factory, they would have received a WARN notice, but—even though they had the very same employer—because they happened to work at different locations the company was not required to give any notice, and that’s just wrong,” said Senator Schumer. “So, in the spirit of fairness, and so this doesn’t happen again, I am announcing plans to introduce new legislation to close this gaping loophole, because we shouldn’t have hundreds of hardworking employees show up for work in the morning only to be told to close up shop—for good. The truth is: this issue is not just about Friendly’s. It’s about fairness and amounts to an acknowledgment corporations need to adhere to and embrace much friendlier worker protections.”
According to reports, over the weekend of April 6-7 the Friendly’s Corporation abruptly and permanently shuttered 23 Friendly’s restaurants across the Northeastern United States.
Locations of the 15 closed Upstate Friendly’s restaurants by region appear below:
Central New York:
- Clay (Great Northern Mall, 4081 Route 31)
- DeWitt (3275 Erie Boulevard E.)
- Oswego (192-196 W. Bridge Street)
- Syracuse (3701 James Street)
Rochester-Finger Lakes Region:
- Gates (2 Spencerport Road)
- Greece (3935 Dewey Avenue)
- Greece (3081 West Ridge Road)
- Victor (697 Eastview Mall)
Western New York:
- Amherst (4350 Maple Road)
- Blasdell (3540 McKinley Parkway)
- Jamestown (10 S. Main Street)
- Williamsville (6651 Transit Road)
Southern Tier:
- Binghamton (1148 Front Street)
- Endicott (301 E. Main Street)
- Oneonta (377 Main Street)
In 1988 Congress passed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act to protect the rights of workers and employees in the United States. The WARN Act mandates that employers give their employees 60 days advance notice of large-scale layoffs under certain circumstances. First, only organizations with 100 employees or more are required to comply with the WARN Act. Second, WARN Act notification is only necessary when 50 or more employees at a single employment site are set to be terminated, or if 50 or more employees are impacted by a factory closing.
Schumer said that since each of the Friendly’s locations didn’t cross the 50 employee threshold at any one employment site, the corporation was not mandated to give employees the two months’ advance notice.
Therefore, Schumer announced that in short order, he would be introducing legislation in the Senate to close this loophole. Specifically, Schumer explained, his legislation would close the WARN act loophole by adjusting the applicability of the single site requirements that allowed Friendly’s to abruptly lay off hundreds of workers.
