After 21 years of driving a truck for Jevic Transportation Inc., the end for Harry Whitworth was swift.
The Delanco company abruptly shut down May 19 and laid off Whitworth, 58, along with more than 1,000 other workers, ending their health insurance with only a few hours' notice. His thoughts went to his wife, Marsha, who would learn that afternoon that the cancer in her lymph nodes had grown. Her doctor held her as she sobbed, her chest heavy with pain.
Until recently, the Whitworths could have done little. The federal law requiring companies with at least 100 employees to notify workers 60 days before layoffs or closings has no enforcement or punishment power.
Employees must sue to recover the value of their benefits and back pay, but the law is so easy to sidestep, the legal process so lengthy, that many employees never recoup their pay, or even try. Only about one-third of companies comply with the notification law, according to a government estimate.
But worker advocates say the Jevic shutdown could mark a turning point in New Jersey, which passed a stronger version of the federal law in December that eliminates exemptions from the advance-notice requirement and raises the amount of money employees can receive in a lawsuit. Like the federal law, it can only be enforced when employees successfully sue.
A lawsuit seeking class-action certification, filed by former employees against Jevic last week in Burlington County Superior Court, will be among the first major tests of the New Jersey legislation.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Robert F. O'Brien, said about 100 employees including Whitworth - only about 10 percent of the old workforce - had retained him as counsel to be part of the class. Jevic's parent company, the private equity firm Sun Capital Partners in Florida, is also named as a defendant in the suit.
Jevic, which had earned the respect of the community and employees, attributed the shutdown to rising fuel costs and a downward turn in the economy. A spokesman did not return a call for comment last week but had previously declined to discuss pending litigation.
The reasoning behind the new state law is that the federal law, known as the WARN Act, "has too many loopholes in it," said David Socolow, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
