CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING : MEP CERCAS URGES COMMISSION TO LEGISLATE.
MEP Alejandro Cercas (S&D, Spain) is convinced that current legislation is obsolete and calls on the European Commission to legislate on corporate restructuring. In a draft report, which will be put to the vote in the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) on 9 October, he calls on his colleagues to invoke Article 225 TFEU(1).
In an information document, MEP Cercas says he was disappointed by the Commission's previous work: "After consulting the European social partners twice in the past decade, the Commission has failed to take practical steps to ensure the wide application throughout the Union of the anticipative and proactive approaches and socially responsible restructuring practices that it recalls in so many policy documents".
According to the European Restructuring Monitor (provided by the European Monitoring Centre on Change, EMCC), over 5,400 cases of large-scale restructuring have been observed in the EU27 since 2008. For these cases alone, each of which involves the redundancies of over a hundred workers, the total loss of jobs is 1.8 million. The Spanish MEP warned that "this trend is likely to increase with the announcement of major restructurings in strategic fields".
Within this context, Cercas makes sixteen recommendations to the Commission for a smarter restructuring policy. These should apply to large enterprises and groups of enterprises that employ at least 500 workers on the territory of the EU, as well as restructuring operations of a certain size, covering at least a hundred workers in a single enterprise, or 500 workers in an enterprise and its subsidiariesor one or several member states over a period of three months.
Firstly, in Cercas' view, the EU framework should be based around the anticipation of change and the preparation of the restructuring process by involving the stakeholders. To do so, Cercas proposes to establish systems and mechanisms "to help with anticipation, objective and impassive management, and conflict prevention". "The setting up of early warning, information and systematic consultation mechanisms during restructuring is also sought," Cercas adds. Redundancies, Cercas says, should only be considered as a last-resort measure.
As an alternative to redundancies, Cercas proposes the following options: "phasing planned measures over time; reduction in work intensification; working time...
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