that would have been due in the notice period, and a $500 a day penalty to the local governments that were not notified. States such as Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine have statutes with slightly more stringent notice requirements, but none yet require real voice for employees before facing economic hardship. A common cause of layoffs is that businesses are merged or taken over, either through stock market acquisitions or private equity transactions, where new managements want to fire parts of the workforce to augment profits for shareholders. Outside limited defenses in corporate law, this issue is largely unregulated. However, if an employer is under a duty to bargain in good faith with a union, and its business is transferred, there will be a duty on the successor employer to continue bargaining if it has retained a substantial number of the previous workforce. This was not made out in the leading case, Howard Johnson Co v Detroit Local Joint Executive Board, where the new owner of a restaurant and motor lodge business retained 9 out of 53 former employees, but hired 45 new staff of its own. The majority held there must be "substantial continuity of identity" of the business for the good faith bargaining duty to continue. Full employment The right to full employment or the "right to work" in a fair paying job is a universal human right in international law, partly inspired by the experience of the New Deal in the 1930s. Unemployment has, however, remained politically divisive because it affects the distribution of wealth and power. When there is full employment under 2%, and everyone can easily find new jobs, worker bargaining power tends to be higher and pay tends to rise, but high unemployment tends to reduce worker power and pay, and may increase shareholder profit. It was long acknowledged that the law should ensure nobody is denied a job by unreasonable restrictions by the state or private parties, and the Supreme Court said in Truax v Raich that "the right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is of the very essence of the personal freedom and opportunity". During the New Deal with unemployment having reached 20% after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 empowered the President to create the Works Progress Administration, which aimed to directly employ people on fair wages. By