State Statutes That Demand More
The federal statute is a floor. Several states lower the employer size that triggers coverage, cut the number of separations that count, lengthen the notice period beyond sixty days, or attach a severance obligation the federal statute never mentions.
The rule in short
State notice statutes depart from the federal model in four directions. California sets coverage at a seventy-five person establishment and counts a mass layoff at fifty separations without any percentage test. New York halves the employer threshold, sets closings at twenty-five and requires ninety days. Maine requires ninety days to a state official before a closing or relocation and imposes severance pay of one week per year of service.
The federal statute is a minimum, and several states have built above it. The departures are not uniform in direction: some lower the size of employer caught, some lower the number of separations that count, some lengthen the period, and one attaches a payment obligation the federal statute never contemplated. An employer with sites in more than one state is running several tests over the same facts.
Lower thresholds, at both ends
California moves the coverage question from the enterprise to the location. A covered establishment is any industrial or commercial facility, or part of one, that employs or has employed within the preceding twelve months seventy-five or more persons. The employer is the person who directly or indirectly owns and operates such an establishment, and a parent corporation is the employer of an establishment directly owned and operated by its subsidiary. There is no aggregate hours alternative and no part-time exclusion in the coverage test; instead, employee is defined as a person employed for at least six of the twelve months preceding the date notice is required.
New York halves the federal figure. An employer is a business enterprise employing fifty or more employees excluding part-time employees, or fifty or more employees working in the aggregate at least two thousand hours per week, and the federal and state definitions otherwise track one another closely. Maine uses one hundred, matching the federal number, but applies it to a facility that has employed that many at any time in the preceding twelve months rather than to the enterprise.
What counts as a reportable event
California drops the percentage test entirely. A mass layoff means a layoff during any thirty-day period of fifty or more employees at a covered establishment, and layoff means a separation from a position for lack of funds or lack of work. Fifty separations at a covered establishment is therefore always enough, whatever proportion of the workforce it represents, which reverses the federal position where fifty out of a large workforce reaches nothing. California also treats termination, meaning the cessation or substantial cessation of operations at a covered establishment, and relocation to a location one hundred miles or more away as separate triggers.
New York keeps the federal structure and lowers the numbers. A plant closing is a shutdown producing employment loss for twenty-five or more employees other than part-time employees in any thirty-day period. A mass layoff requires at least thirty-three percent of employees and at least twenty-five of them, or at least two hundred fifty employees regardless of proportion. Every figure is roughly half the federal one.
Maine approaches the question from a different angle again. Its statute is organized around severance rather than notice, so its operative events are the closing, substantial shutdown or relocation of a covered establishment and a mass layoff at one. Relocation is defined by the same hundred-mile removal California uses. Because the obligation is a payment rather than a warning, the definitions do work the federal statute does not ask of its own: they determine who is paid and how much, not merely who is written to.
| Feature | Federal statute | California | New York | Maine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coverage | One hundred employees, or four thousand aggregate hours | Seventy-five persons at an establishment | Fifty employees, or two thousand aggregate hours | One hundred persons at a facility |
| Closing threshold | Fifty employment losses | Cessation of operations, no separate count | Twenty-five employment losses | Permanent shutdown of the establishment |
| Mass layoff threshold | Fifty and thirty-three percent, or five hundred | Fifty separations in thirty days | Twenty-five and thirty-three percent, or two hundred fifty | Not the primary trigger |
| Notice period | Sixty days | Sixty days | Ninety days | Ninety days to the director before a closing or relocation |
| Severance | None | None | None | One week per year for employees with three years |
Longer periods and additional recipients
New York requires at least ninety days rather than sixty, and widens the recipient list considerably. Notice goes to affected employees and their representatives, the state department, the local workforce investment boards for the locality of the site, the chief elected official of each unit of local government and each school district for that locality, and each locality providing police, firefighting, emergency medical or ambulance services to the site. The statute then requires the notice to include the elements required by the federal statute, so the content standard is imported rather than rewritten.
California directs its sixty-day notice to the employees of the covered establishment affected by the order and to three institutional recipients: the Employment Development Department, the local workforce development board, and the chief elected official of each city and county government within which the action occurs. Maine's obligation runs to a state director, who must be notified in writing not less than ninety days before a relocation or closing; for a mass layoff, the employer notifies as far in advance as practicable and no later than seven days after the layoff.
That last provision is worth pausing on because it inverts the usual structure. A deadline expressed as seven days after the event is not advance notice at all; it is a reporting duty attached to something that has already happened. An employer reading the Maine statute for its notice period and finding ninety days will miss it, because the ninety days attaches only to closings and relocations. The two obligations sit in the same subsection and run on entirely different logic.
Maine requires an employer that closes or engages in a mass layoff at a covered establishment to pay eligible employees severance at the rate of one week's pay for each year of employment, with partial pay for a partial year. Eligibility runs to employees with three or more years at the establishment who were not terminated for cause and have not accepted employment at another or relocated establishment. The severance is in addition to final wages and must be paid within one regular pay period after the employee's last full day of work, which is a faster clock than most final pay rules, as described in final pay and the deadlines that run alongside.
Building one plan from several statutes
Because the statutes operate independently, the workable method is to resolve each variable separately for each site and then take the most demanding answer. The longest notice period governs the calendar. The lowest threshold governs whether notice is owed at all, which means a reduction that clears the federal test may still be reportable, and the federal coverage analysis in which employers the notice statute covers is only the first of several. The widest recipient list governs distribution. And where a state adds a content element, it is added rather than substituted.
Two state features have no federal counterpart and are easy to miss for that reason. Relocation is a trigger in California and Maine and is not one federally, so a long-distance move can create an obligation where no jobs are being eliminated. And California's civil penalty of up to five hundred dollars for each day of violation is avoidable if the employer pays the amounts owed to all applicable employees within three weeks of ordering the action, a structure that mirrors the federal penalty provision discussed in damages an employer owes for a short notice. The state clocks themselves run alongside the federal one described in the sixty days and when the clock starts rather than replacing it.
Points to carry away
- California defines a covered establishment as one employing seventy-five or more persons in the preceding twelve months.
- California counts a mass layoff as fifty separations in thirty days, with no percentage requirement.
- New York covers employers of fifty and sets a plant closing at twenty-five employment losses.
- New York requires ninety days rather than sixty and adds school districts and emergency services to the recipient list.
- Maine requires ninety days written notice to a state director before a closing or relocation.
- Maine imposes severance pay of one week for each year of service for employees with three or more years.
Questions readers ask
Does complying with the federal statute satisfy a state one?
Only where the state requirement is no greater. State statutes operate independently, so an employer meeting the federal sixty days in a state requiring ninety has satisfied one obligation and breached the other. The practical approach is to identify, for each site, the longest applicable notice period, the lowest applicable threshold and the widest applicable recipient list, and to work to that combination. New York expressly requires its notices to include the elements required by the federal statute, which makes a single document workable there.
What is a relocation under the state statutes?
It is a separate trigger that the federal statute does not have. California defines relocation as the removal of all or substantially all of the industrial or commercial operations in a covered establishment to a different location one hundred miles or more away. Maine uses the same hundred-mile figure in its own definition. An employer moving a site a long distance may therefore owe notice, and in Maine severance, even though nobody is being made redundant and the federal statute is not engaged at all.
Are the state exceptions the same as the federal ones?
They overlap but are not identical, and one difference is structural. California's faltering company relief is conditioned on a determination by the state department that the conditions exist, rather than on the employer's own assessment defended afterwards. New York excuses notice where a mass layoff, relocation or employment loss is necessitated by a physical calamity or an act of terrorism or war, which is narrower in some respects than the federal natural disaster and unforeseeable circumstances exceptions and broader in others.
Sources
- California Labor Code section 1400.5Defines covered establishment at seventy-five persons, mass layoff at fifty separations and relocation at one hundred miles.
- California Labor Code section 1401Requires sixty days written notice to affected employees and to three separate state and local recipients.
- California Labor Code section 1403Imposes a civil penalty of up to five hundred dollars a day, avoidable by paying employees within three weeks.
- New York Labor Law section 860-aSets the fifty employee coverage threshold, the twenty-five employee closing and the mass layoff tests.
- New York Labor Law section 860-bRequires ninety days notice, names the additional recipients and imports the federal content elements.
- 26 M.R.S. section 625-B — Severance payRequires ninety days notice to the director and severance of one week per year for employees with three years of service.
- 29 U.S.C. 2101 — DefinitionsThe federal floor against which each state departure is measured.
Rapid Response Law is a publication, not a law firm. This article states general rules and cites its sources; it is not advice about any particular case, and the law differs by state and changes over time.
More in Layoff Notice
Giving as Much Notice as Possible When an Exception Applies
Where a statutory exception applies, the employer must give as much notice as is practicable to the union, non-represented employees, the state dislocated worker unit and the unit of local government, and the regulation acknowledges that in some circumstances this may be notice after the fact. At the time notice is actually given, the employer must also provide a brief statement of the reason for reducing the notice period, in addition to the ordinary content elements.
What Counts as a Single Site of Employment
A single site of employment can be one location or a group of contiguous locations, and a campus or industrial park may be one site. Separate buildings not in immediate proximity may still be one site where they are reasonably close, used for the same purpose and share staff and equipment. Contiguous buildings with separate management, different products and separate workforces are separate sites. Mobile and outstationed workers belong to the home base from which their work is assigned.
The Sixty Days and When the Clock Starts
Notice must be given at least sixty calendar days before a planned closing or mass layoff. Where separations occur on different days, the first individual termination within the statutory thirty-day or ninety-day period triggers the requirement, and each subsequent group of terminees is entitled to a full sixty days. A notice may express the date as a specific day or as a fourteen-day period, in which case the sixty days run from the first day of that period.