UNITED STEEL WORKERS OF AMERICA LOCAL 2660 v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION, No. 11–3002., July 02, 2012 - US 8th Circuit | FindLaw

UNITED STEEL WORKERS OF AMERICA LOCAL 2660 v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION, No. 11–3002., July 02, 2012 - US 8th Circuit | FindLaw

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deals with "warn notice"

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App'x 0104–05. The layoff occurred between December 7 and 21, 2008. By December 29, 2009, nearly all the laid-off workers had been recalled.
The Union filed a complaint for damages on August 25, 2009, alleging that U.S. Steel had violated the WARN Act by failing to provide sixty days' notice of the mass layoff to the Union or affected employees, as required under the statute. U.S. Steel moved for summary judgment, arguing that an exception to the WARN Act for unforeseeable business circumstances applied. In support, U.S. Steel submitted affidavits by John Price, who served as U.S. Steel's Vice President of Supply Chain Management in 2008, and John Skube, Manager of Employee Relations for U.S. Steel's Minnesota Ore Operations. Price attested that, during his forty years at U.S. Steel, he had “never witnessed such a massive and precipitous drop in customer orders as occurred during the latter part of 2008,” that U.S. Steel's “traditional methodology of relying on quarterly marketing and sales forecasts to load and schedule our facilities proved inadequate during this period,” and that “[b]ased on the accelerating deterioration in business conditions at the end of November, it was evident that further reductions in operations ․ had to be accomplished immediately—i.e., in early December ․ in the face of what was recognized—at that point—as an unprecedented economic crisis.” Price Decl. ¶¶ 33–34. From July to early November of 2008, U.S. Steel's blast furnace capacity utilization rate dropped from 92 percent to 52 percent, then to 46 percent by late November 2008.² To operate profitably, a 65 percent capacity utilization rate is necessary. The Union did not dispute the evidence presented by U.S. Steel, but argued that U.S. Steel did not present sufficient evidence to sustain its burden of proof on the unforeseeable business circumstances exception.

In granting summary judgment to U.S. Steel, the district court concluded that the exception for unforeseeable business circumstances applied; thus, sixty days' notice was not required under the circumstances.