The New Jersey Senate Labor Committee unanimously passed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), aimed at protecting workers by requiring advance notification and severance pay for mass layoffs.

Sen. Joe Cryan, D-Union, and Sen. Nellie Pou, D-Passaic/Bergen, co-authored the proposed legislation (S3162/A4768), which would increase the prenotification time to workers and would require severance pay for business closings, mass layoffs, and transfers. New Jersey was the first state in the country to enact a law of this kind, guaranteeing severance pay after mass layoffs.