When Do Remote Employees Count as One Worksite Under WARN’s Layoff-Notice Law?

Your employees work from kitchen tables across the country. Before eliminating their jobs, you may need to figure out which tables count together.

TL;DR: Courts disagree about how federal WARN’s layoff-notice requirements apply to fully remote employees. A Florida employer won this case, but working from home does not establish a nationwide exemption. The applicable court decisions and employees’ actual work connections matter.

📄 Read the court’s decision

An aviation company terminated two remote employees and at least 200 others in August 2024 to facilitate an aircraft-management agreement with another company. The employees sued under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), claiming entitlement to 60 days’ advance notice. The employer won before trial because they could not establish enough job losses at a single site of employment.

First, what triggers WARN notice?

Federal WARN generally requires covered employers to provide 60 days’ advance notice before qualifying plant closings or mass layoffs.

Coverage generally starts at 100 employees, excluding WARN-defined part-time employees. An alternative test includes part-time employees if at least 100 employees collectively work 4,000 hours weekly, excluding overtime.

The usual triggers involve employment losses within 30 days at a single site:

• A closing: Shutting down a site, facility, or operating unit causes at least 50 employment losses.
• A mass layoff: At least 500 employment losses, or 50–499 losses representing at least 33% of the site’s active workforce. WARN-defined part-time employees are excluded from both calculations.

Part-time employees are excluded from these triggering counts but can nevertheless qualify for notice. Related losses may require aggregation over 90 days.

What if everyone works from home?

A Department of Labor regulation counts certain employees working outside regular worksites at their assigned home base, the location from which their work is assigned, or the location to which they report.

Courts disagree about whether this rule includes ordinary employees working entirely from home. For example, in 2022, a Delaware bankruptcy court concluded that it does and allowed a WARN class action to include remote employees. Whether their assignments connected them to the company’s Las Vegas facility remained disputed. The ruling did not establish that every remote employee counts at headquarters.

The Florida court took the narrower approach, limiting the rule to genuinely mobile workers whose duties require travel. Being able to open a laptop anywhere did not qualify. Other lower courts have taken that approach.

In other words, your mileage may vary. These lower-court decisions supply no uniform nationwide rule.

An almost-empty headquarters could not connect this workforce

The company’s non-pilot employees and their supervisors worked remotely across several states. Employees had no assigned offices or requirement to report to a fixed physical location. They argued that the Georgia headquarters counted as everyone’s worksite, while acknowledging that nobody was assigned to or worked out of it. The employer described one desk and someone periodically checking the mailbox.

The court rejected their argument twice over: the special rule did not cover them, and even if it did, they could not establish a qualifying common worksite. Their remote supervisors each oversaw 47 or fewer employees. Nobody supervised them from headquarters, and they did not rebut that evidence.

A provision for unusual organizational situations did not change the result. Sharing an employer and operational purpose could not turn the largely vacant headquarters into everyone’s worksite.

Three practical points follow.

1. Never visiting an office does not settle the notice question

Under the broader interpretation, fully remote employees may count at a common assignment or reporting location. If the losses there meet WARN’s thresholds, a covered employer generally must provide notice, subject to applicable exceptions.

2. Map how the work actually happens

Identify who assigns work, who supervises employees, and where those decisions originate. Do managers make daily work decisions or pass along instructions from elsewhere? A mailing address or centralized payroll function may establish little. Count employees connected to the same qualifying worksite across reporting groups, rather than looking at each supervisor’s team separately.

3. Resolve the uncertainty before setting termination dates

Employers and counsel should review the applicable court decisions, identify qualifying sites, and calculate employment losses. State layoff-notice laws require separate review. If coverage remains uncertain, consider whether providing notice is prudent.

Before cutting remote jobs, determine where those employees count, whether the losses trigger notice, and which court decisions apply. That analysis needs to happen while 60 days’ notice is still an option.