Former employees of the now-defunct New York installer Level Solar filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming the company fired nearly 200 employees without the 90-day notice required under the New York Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (NY WARN Act).
The plaintiffs are asking the court to award them “their unpaid wages, salary, commissions, bonuses, accrued holiday pay, accrued vacation pay, health and life insurance, and other ERISA benefits, for 60 days, that would have been covered and paid under the then-applicable employee benefit plans had that coverage continued for that period, all determined in accordance with the NY WARN Act.”
Under the federal WARN Act, employers with more than 100 employees must give 60 days notice to employees before a company decides to shut down a business. In New York, the legislature has a more stringent requirement of 90 days.
The lawsuit is just the latest in the bizarre turns in the case of Level Solar, which first disappeared from existence overnight in September. Americas Editor Christian Roselund put it best in his original story about its disappearance, when he wrote:
And just like that, they were gone. As of today, Level Solar’s website is offline, their phone has an out-of-hours message in the middle of the day, and former employees are stating that everyone has been let go.
The company then formally filed for bankruptcy in December, reporting that it owed more than 200 creditors between $1 million and $10 million.
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I was layed off work on Monday they to me the company called chefd is shut down no notice no nothing