In Roberts v. Genting New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit addressed the term “operating unit” as a trigger for notice requirements under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
The WARN Act requires a business with 100 or more employees to give 60 days’ notice before closing a plant. The statute defines closing a plant as shutting down a single site of employment or one or more operating units within a single site of employment.
Here, the owner of a restaurant located inside a casino closed the restaurant and laid off 177 employees with no advance notice. A group of employees sued, alleging that the restaurant owner’s failure to provide notice violated the WARN Act. The appeals court denied summary judgement and sent the case back to the trial court.
The appeals court noted that a large portion of the restaurant’s operations were integrated into the casino. It concluded that summary judgment was not appropriate because there was evidence to support both that the restaurant was an operating unit and that it was not.