The 60-day WARN notice sitting in your inbox isn't just a courtesy—it's a countdown clock on your employee benefits. Your health insurance, disability coverage, life insurance, and retirement contributions are all still active right now, but they terminate on your last day of employment. What you do during these 60 days determines whether you walk away with your benefits protected or scramble to recover coverage after it's too late.
As Intel cut positions in Chandler and Santa Clara, Microsoft reduced headcount in Mountain View, Amazon restructured in Phoenix and San Diego, and Chevron eliminated roles in San Ramon, thousands of California and Arizona tech professionals received WARN notices in 2025 and early 2026. These notices create both pressure and opportunity. The pressure comes from knowing your job ends on a specific date. The opportunity comes from having 60 days while still employed—and still covered—to make strategic decisions about benefits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Understanding Your WARN Notice: What It Means and What It Doesn't
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days advance written notice before a plant closing or mass layoff affecting 50 or more workers. The notice must specify the expected separation date, whether the layoff is temporary or permanent, and which positions are affected.
California's mini-WARN Act—often called Cal-WARN—casts a wider net. It applies to employers with 75 or more employees (not 100) and triggers when 50 or more employees lose their jobs at a single site within a 30-day period. California's law also covers facility relocations of 100 miles or more and terminations, making it broader than the federal requirement. There's no percentage threshold in California—50 employees is enough regardless of total workforce size.
Arizona follows only the federal WARN Act with no additional state-level requirements. The 100-employee, 50-worker layoff threshold applies, and the 60-day notice period is standard.
Here's what the notice means for your benefits: You remain an active employee during the entire 60-day period. Your group health insurance stays in effect. Your disability coverage continues. Your 401(k) contributions keep going. Stock continues vesting according to your grant schedules. This active employment status is critical because many benefits—especially disability coverage—require that you be employed and covered when you become disabled or when your elimination period ends.
Intel's Chandler facility laid off approximately 800 employees across 2025 with varying WARN notice periods. Microsoft's California operations issued notices to employees in Mountain View affecting hundreds of positions. Amazon's Phoenix-area workforce reductions triggered federal WARN requirements. Chevron's San Ramon headquarters cuts impacted 600-plus employees in mid-2025 with additional reductions announced for late 2025. Each of these companies provided WARN notices that started the 60-day countdown.
Your Benefits Inventory: What You Have and What You're Losing
Take inventory of every benefit you currently have because most terminate on your last day of employment.
Disability Coverage (Most Critical)
Your employer-sponsored short-term and long-term disability insurance ends when your employment ends. If you become disabled after your last day of work, you cannot file a new claim. The only exception is if you can prove your disability began while you were still covered—a much harder burden of proof that requires extensive medical documentation from your employment period. If you're experiencing any health symptoms that affect your ability to work, the 60-day WARN period is your last opportunity to file while clearly covered. For tech employees managing chronic pain, cognitive issues, mental health conditions, or any other symptoms that interfere with job performance, waiting until after termination to file makes claims exponentially more difficult to prove.
Health Insurance
Your group health coverage continues through your last day of employment, then ends. You have the right to continue coverage through COBRA for up to 18 months, though you'll pay the full premium plus a 2% administrative fee—typically $700 to $2,000+ per month for family coverage depending on your plan. The COBRA election notice arrives after your termination. You have 60 days from receiving that notice to elect continuation coverage. California and Arizona residents can also explore coverage through Covered California or the federal Health Insurance Marketplace, which may cost less than COBRA depending on your income and subsidy eligibility.
Life Insurance and AD&D
Group life insurance and accidental death and dismemberment coverage typically terminate on your last day of employment. Some policies offer conversion options allowing you to convert your group term life insurance to an individual policy without medical underwriting, but the premiums are usually much higher than buying a new individual policy if you're healthy. Review your benefits handbook for conversion rights and deadlines.
Retirement Accounts
Your 401(k) vesting status determines what you keep. Company matching contributions may have a vesting schedule—commonly three years cliff vesting or six years graded vesting. If you're not fully vested, you forfeit unvested employer contributions when you leave. Your own contributions and any investment gains are always 100% yours. After termination, you typically have 60 days to roll your 401(k) into an IRA or new employer's plan to avoid 20% mandatory tax withholding.
Stock Compensation (Critical for Tech Employees)
Equity compensation is often the largest component of total compensation at companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Amazon. Restricted Stock Units typically continue vesting through your termination date—you keep anything that vests before your last day and forfeit unvested shares unless your separation agreement includes vesting acceleration. Stock options have post-termination exercise windows, typically 90 days for non-qualified stock options. Incentive Stock Options usually have shorter windows. If you have underwater options (strike price above current stock price), they're worthless. If they're in-the-money, you must decide within your exercise window whether to pay the strike price to acquire the shares. Intel employees should check whether "Rule of 60" or "Rule of 75" provisions affect their equity treatment—these provisions can provide vesting acceleration for employees meeting certain age and service combinations.
The Disability Coverage Decision: Act Now or Lose Eligibility
The math on disability coverage is unforgiving during WARN periods. Most long-term disability policies have elimination periods—waiting periods of 90 to 180 days between when you become disabled and when benefits begin. If you receive a 60-day WARN notice today, and your policy has a 90-day elimination period, your employment ends before your elimination period completes. Unless you filed your disability claim well before the WARN notice arrived, you won't qualify for benefits under many policy terms.
If you're currently healthy with no symptoms affecting your work capacity, understand your disability coverage just in case. Know your elimination period, your benefit amount (typically 60% of salary up to a monthly maximum of $10,000-$15,000), and your policy's definition of disability. Store this information because if health issues develop suddenly during your notice period, you'll need to act within days.
If you're managing symptoms—chronic pain, fatigue, cognitive difficulties, mental health conditions, or any medical issues affecting your work performance—the 60-day WARN notice is your final window to file a claim while clearly covered. After termination, you must prove your disability began during employment through medical records, which is significantly harder if you haven't been documenting symptoms with your healthcare providers. Every day that passes brings you closer to losing this coverage entirely. For employees dealing with health challenges during layoffs, our guide on working while disabled explains the signs that "getting by" has crossed into disability territory.
If you're already on short-term disability when you receive your WARN notice, you face urgent timing issues. For employees already receiving LTD when layoffs are announced, understanding what happens to ongoing benefits during job loss is critical—your benefits should continue, but severance agreements can create unexpected complications. Most LTD elimination periods are 90 or 180 days. If your employment ends before your elimination period completes, some insurers will deny your LTD claim arguing you weren't covered when the waiting period ended. File your LTD application 30-45 days before your termination date if possible, even if your elimination period hasn't technically expired yet. Establishing the claim while clearly employed gives you the strongest position.
The mental health angle deserves specific attention. Employees at Microsoft, Intel, and Amazon report that job insecurity itself has triggered severe anxiety, depression, and stress-related symptoms during the 2025 layoffs. If workplace stress has you unable to concentrate, experiencing panic attacks, requiring psychiatric medication, or unable to perform your job duties, that's potentially a disabling mental health condition—not just normal workplace anxiety. Mental health disability claims require psychiatric evaluations and detailed functional assessments from mental health providers, which take time to arrange. Don't wait until week 8 of your WARN period to seek this documentation.
Severance Packages: What to Expect and How to Negotiate
Severance package formulas vary widely by company and position. Intel's traditional formula was 4 weeks base pay plus 1.5 weeks per year of service, though some 2025 layoff rounds offered reduced packages or no severance at all for certain employee groups. Microsoft packages for the 2025 reductions reportedly ranged from 16 weeks base for shorter-tenure employees to significantly more for senior staff. Amazon's corporate severance typically includes several months of base salary plus continuation of certain benefits.
Nearly everything in a severance package is negotiable if you have leverage. Companies want clean, litigation-free separations. If you have potential legal claims—age discrimination, disability discrimination, retaliation—they may improve the offer. If you're a high performer with institutional knowledge they need during the transition, you can negotiate for extended healthcare coverage, longer severance periods, or enhanced outplacement services.
The release agreement attached to your severance package deserves careful scrutiny. Standard release language often includes waivers of ERISA claims, meaning you sign away your right to file disability claims, appeal denials, or sue regarding any employee benefit plans. If you have any health issues or might need disability benefits in the future, negotiate a specific carve-out excluding ERISA and disability benefit claims from the release. Companies often agree to this modification because it costs them nothing and still releases the employment-related claims they care about.
Offset provisions in your LTD policy may reduce your disability benefits dollar-for-dollar by any severance payments you receive. Check your Summary Plan Description for language about "deductible income" or "offsets." If your severance will reduce your disability payments temporarily, factor that into your decision about whether to accept the severance or preserve maximum disability benefits.
Your 60-Day Action Plan: Week by Week
Break down the WARN period into manageable phases with specific action items for each window.
Weeks 1-2 (Days 1-14): Assess and Document
Request complete copies of all benefit plan documents from HR—full policies, not just summary booklets. Get your Summary Plan Descriptions for health, disability, and life insurance. Review your 401(k) account statement and vesting schedule. Pull your stock grant agreements and current vesting status.
If you have any health symptoms affecting your work, schedule appointments with your physicians immediately. You need contemporaneous medical documentation—records created during your employment showing symptoms and functional limitations. This is your last chance to build a medical paper trail while clearly covered by your disability policy.
Calculate the lifetime value of your disability coverage. Take your annual salary, multiply by 0.60, multiply by 12, then multiply by years to age 65. Compare that to your severance offer. An Intel engineer earning $180,000 has LTD coverage potentially worth $2.16 million from age 45 to 65. The severance might be $80,000. Understand what you're potentially trading.
Weeks 3-5 (Days 15-35): Decide and Act
If you have disabling symptoms, file your disability claim by day 30 if possible. Don't wait until the last week. Claims filed early in the WARN period face less insurer scrutiny than claims filed days before termination.
Consult an ERISA disability attorney if you're filing a claim, if you have questions about your severance release language, or if your situation is complex. The consultation typically costs $500-$1,500—minimal compared to benefits at risk.
Begin severance negotiation if you want changes to the offer. Request specific carve-out language for ERISA claims. Ask for COBRA premium assistance if not included. The earlier you start negotiation, the more time the company has to consider and approve modifications.
Research COBRA costs versus California Covered California or federal Marketplace options. Your income will drop after termination, potentially qualifying you for subsidies that make Marketplace coverage cheaper than COBRA. Run the numbers for both options.
Weeks 6-8 (Days 36-60): Finalize
Review your final severance agreement carefully. If it contains release language affecting disability benefits and you haven't negotiated a carve-out, don't sign without attorney review. You typically have 21 days to review individual termination agreements and 45 days for group layoffs under federal law, plus a 7-day revocation period after signing.
Confirm the COBRA election process and timing. The election notice arrives after termination, and you have 60 days from receiving it to elect coverage. Mark these deadlines clearly.
Make stock decisions before your exercise window closes. For in-the-money options, decide whether to exercise based on your financial situation, tax implications, and belief in the company's future. For RSUs that vested before termination, decide whether to hold or sell based on diversification needs and tax planning.
Plan your 401(k) rollover to avoid the automatic 20% withholding that applies to distributions. A direct rollover to an IRA or new employer plan avoids this withholding.
Critical Post-Termination Deadlines
COBRA election: 60 days from receiving the election notice (not from termination date). Miss this and you lose the right to continue coverage.
ERISA appeal deadline: 180 days from denial of disability claim. This deadline is absolute—federal courts cannot extend it.
Stock option exercise: Typically 90 days post-termination for non-qualified options, sometimes less for ISOs. Check your specific grant agreements.
401(k) rollover: Technically no deadline, but initiate within 60 days to avoid mandatory withholding complications.
High-Value Employees: Additional Considerations
Senior employees and executives often have benefits beyond standard packages. Supplemental executive disability policies, deferred compensation plans, performance share units, and retention bonuses complicate the benefits picture. These employees need specialized guidance on the tax treatment of various election options, especially regarding equity compensation where decisions can trigger six-figure tax bills.
Non-compete and non-solicitation agreements may restrict your next career move. Review these provisions carefully before accepting roles at competitors or starting competing businesses. California generally doesn't enforce non-competes except in narrow circumstances, but Arizona does enforce reasonable restrictions.
For tech employees with complex compensation—multiple stock grants with staggered vesting, employee stock purchase plans, qualified versus non-qualified stock options—consider consulting with both a tax advisor and a benefits attorney. The decisions you make during the WARN period can have tax implications lasting years.
The WARN notice gives you something rare in layoff situations: time. Sixty days while still employed and covered to inventory benefits, file disability claims if needed, negotiate severance terms, and plan your financial transition. Companies that cut positions without notice leave employees scrambling to recover benefits after coverage has already ended. Use this window strategically.
Sandstone Law Group helps tech and corporate professionals navigate the intersection of layoffs and employee benefits, particularly around disability coverage, severance releases, and benefit protection. If you received a WARN notice and need to understand your disability coverage, negotiate severance terms, or file a claim before your employment ends, call (602) 615-0050 or contact us online for a free consultation. These 60 days go quickly—start protecting your benefits now.