Interesting update re the above case and one we were discussing in last week's CHRP Managing Employee Relations workshops.
The case was referred to the CJEU (The Court of Justice for the European Union formerly the ECJ) by the EAT last year which said that businesses must collectively consult whenever they planned to make 20 or more redundancies within 90 days regardless of how many were in a single location or 'establishment' as more commonly referred to.
It has not been ruled on as yet but on Thursday the Advocate General (an adviser to the CJEU) stated that the UK rules limiting collective consultation requirements to cases where an employer was proposing 20 or more redundancies at one establishment are compatible with EU law. Effectively reversing the decision reached by the EAT last year. The Advocate General's guidance is not binding but typically it is a good indication of where the CJEU will land.
Larger UK businesses will be breathing a sigh of relief as the impact of the EAT's previous ruling on failure to collectively consult was significant especially in larger more complicated businesses. As the penalty for failure to collectively consult of a protective award of up to 90 days' pay for each employee could potentially be very costly and managing multiple redundancy programmes across multiple sites very tricky!
Further details are here
What do you think about this?
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