Great Britain: government appeal to ruling amending criteria kicking off mass layoff procedure

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has granted the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) the right to appeal against a major decision rendered in May, which applied the principle that employers had to apply the procedure for consulting employee representatives in case of collective redundancy as soon as 20 workers or more were concerned, even if they were in different sites.  Until now, the reference level was the establishment. The case is expected to be heard by the Court of Appeal before the end of 2013. (Ref.  130557)
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In May this year, in a case brought by the shop workers’ union, USDAW, over four thousands of former employees of Woolworths and Ethel Austin won pay outs after the EAT ruled that the companies’ administrators did not consult fully with representatives over job losses when the businesses were going into administration. Around 1,200 Ethel Austin staff and 3,200 Woolworth workers had missed out on the £70 million (nearly €84 million) compensation awarded to their fellow colleagues (numbering 25,0

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