In a preliminary ruling handed down on 11 November relating to Spanish law, the CJEU decided that employment contract terminations taking the form of contractual terminations stemming from a refusal for a proposed change in an employment contract made on economic grounds should be treated as redundancy and included in the threshold counts for collective redundancies. Even if the legislator can also qualify and classify such contract terminations differently, this does not mean that such contract terminations are outside the rules that apply to collective redundancies. Indeed the ruling confirms that employees on fixed-term contracts should be included in the ‘regularly employed worker’ count that is also used to trigger collective redundancy procedures.
Employment contract termination because of a refusal to accept a unilateral modification change to the employment contract made on economic grounds. The Spanish employer can modify (even more easily now than before since the most recent reform to the labor market) “substantial elements of the employment contract.” Should the employee refuse the change then the employee can request that the contract be terminated. The termination takes the form of a ‘contractual termination’, and the employee re
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