Chicago Sit-In Highlights Laid-Off Workers, Employers' Obligations, and WARN Act, According to Outten & ...( NEW YORK Dec. 10 /- As the Chicago wo...),Health

NEW YORK, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- As the Chicago workers' sit-in shifted national attention to the plight of laid-off workers, the conflict also shows that millions of non-union employees face a nightmarish loss of health coverage benefits in layoffs and should know their legal rights, according to the national employee rights law firm of Outten & Golden LLP.

According to Jack A. Raisner, a partner in the New York office of Outten & Golden LLP which represents employees throughout the nation in pending layoff-related litigation, "The Chicago sit-in should be a wake-up call to the 88 percent of employees nationally who are not union members and depend on their employers alone for their health coverage."

Raisner points to the dire medical crises facing hundreds of laid-off employees from Archway Cookies and Mother's Cookies who were profiled last week in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as proof of his point.

"In a sense," Raisner says, "the Chicago employees are the lucky ones. When most of the rest of us lose our jobs in a company shut down or bankruptcy, we don't have a safety net of a union to turn to when it comes to health insurance. That's the situation for thousands of employees of bankrupt companies such as Archway and Mother's Cookies, national car dealer Bill Heard Enterprises, and trucking company Jevic Transportation. Millions more may be stricken by the combination of job and insurance loss as bankruptcies and layoffs soar."

Outten & Golden is pursuing WARN Act claims on behalf of at least 25 groups of laid-off or terminated employees from around the nation. Rene' S. Roupinian, who co-chairs Outten & Golden LLP's WARN Act group (http://www.warnlawyers.com), urges employees to investigate whether they might be covered by the WARN Act, which provides eligible employees who receive l
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