01 May 2015

By Michael Ford QC.

In the 1970s AZCO, a multinational with employees in various European countries, decided it would make about 5000 workers redundant. It took care to work out in which Member State the costs of redundancies were lowest, and sacked the workers there. The response from the European Community was Directive 75/129 on collective redundancies (now Directive 98/59). An early measure of social protection, the Directive emphasised in its preamble its primary objective: "that greater protection should be afforded to workers in the event of redundancies while taking into account the need for balanced economic and social development".