Shari's Cafe and Pies on Bend's north side, shown Oct. 21, has permanently closed.

The abrupt closure of all the Oregon locations for Shari’s Café & Pies came with little warning for employees — or the state workforce officials and nonprofit partners now trying to help laid-off workers find new jobs.

A new lawsuit alleges the restaurant chain violated federal law by failing to provide adequate notice. And Worksystems, a workforce development board in Portland and in Multnomah and Washington counties, says the company has gone silent, complicating efforts to provide training or job placements.

Worksystems tried contacting the restaurant chain two or three times, according to layoff transition assistance lead Natalia Rawls. It’s unusual to not hear back from an employer, especially when a large layoff occurs, she said.

“It absolutely does make our job much more difficult when we can’t reach the employer to help support their impacted workers,” said Rawls, who is now trying to reach former Shari’s employees in the Portland area.

“However, I want to be clear that our mission is to help impacted workers, and so even if we don’t have support from the employer or we don’t hear back, we still can take our own initiative through outreach,” she said.

Worksystems is putting on an event next week for former Shari’s employees. It is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 18, at WorkSource Beaverton-Hillsboro at 241 S.W. Edgeway Drive. Rawls said affected employees can also reach her at nrawls@worksystems.org.

The lawsuit over notice to employees and the state, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Oregon, alleges Shari’s parent company, Gather Holdings Guarantee LLC, failed to follow the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

In Oregon, such notices are posted publicly by the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission. No notice was filed for Shari’s or affiliated companies.

Not all layoffs require notice under the WARN Act. Small layoffs generally don’t have to be disclosed to state officials, and others are covered by exemptions written into the law.

The lawsuit, though, claims Shari’s planned layoffs were sufficient to trigger the WARN Act.

The lawsuit, filed as a class-action complaint by former Shari’s employee Heidi Woebbeking, claims Gather and another defendant, Shari’s Management Corp., failed to provide the legally required 60 days’ notice “even though they planned to abolish, terminate, and/or layoff at least 50 employees and 33% of the employees employed there.”

Woebbeking, who worked at a Grants Pass location, seeks to represent all the Shari’s employees laid off within 90 days of Oct. 20 and who allegedly weren’t given proper notice. The lawsuit further alleged that company leadership “not only failed to provide any advance notice, but they also failed to pay out the full amount of Plaintiff and the putative class’s final paychecks.”

Woebbeking declined to comment.

It’s unclear how many employees Shari’s laid off. That number would typically be made public through the WARN filing.

The WARN notice also serves to mobilize so-called rapid response teams with local workforce development boards like Worksystems, who seek to assist laid-off employees in finding new jobs and filing for unemployment insurance.

Shari’s statewide closure only became public after the Oregon Lottery — the restaurant used video lottery equipment — contacted Sam Borgese, managing member of the restaurant chain’s parent company, to ask about pending closures. Borgese sent a short email to Lottery confirming the closures on Oct. 21.

Employees, meanwhile, learned about the restaurant chain’s Oregon closure in an email from Borgese dated Oct. 20.

Shari’s still owes Lottery more than $905,000 in outstanding debt, a spokesperson said last week. Unlike Worksystems, Lottery has had some luck getting in contact with Shari’s higher ups.

“We have been sending emails and have acknowledgment they are being received,” Lottery spokesperson Melanie Mesaros said. “We do not know if and when the money will be paid.”

Borgese did not respond to a request for comment from The Oregonian.