Clinton Mulls Requiring More Notice of Layoffs --- Current Plant-Closing Law Has Proven to Be Flop, GAO Study Indicates
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is weighing a plan to force more companies to give workers advance notice before closing plants.</br></br>A draft document outlining the proposal is circulating around Capitol Hill as part of the Labor Department's "dislocated worker" plan, which proposes transforming the unemployment-insurance system into a broader job training and career counseling program.</br></br>Since its enactment in 1988, the plant-closing law has been a flop. Officially, it requires corporations to provide 60 days notice any time they furlough a third or more of the full-time workers at any site of at least 150 workers, or if they cut 500 employees at any facility. Notice also is required for any permanent plant closure that affects 50 workers.</br></br>But whole sectors of corporate America have shuttered plants over the past several years without ever telling workers of their impending fate. In a study of the law, the General Accounting Office earlier this year said about half the plant closings were exempt from the law because of size. The GAO said that of the remaining plants, about half didn't provide enough notice or any at all.</br></br>The GAO said much of the failure stemmed from companies' lack of knowledge about the provisions of the law. And no government entity currently has the power to enforce the law.