Page 46 - Socially-responsible-restructuring-Effective-strategies-for-supporting-redundant-workers

Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

In a number of the Member States the emphasis in establishing minimum
service levels, including career information and related guidance services, stems
less from regulatory provision than from an emphasis on previously negotiated
collective agreements for restructuring or job displacement situations. However,
the characteristic content of these varies greatly and may focus on notification
periods and processes, financial support, PES referral, and retraining provision,
either through public or employer supported services. Only Germany, Norway
and Sweden of the review countries have agreements that commonly might
involve provisions for career guidance to redundant and at-risk employees,
although some specific sectoral agreements elsewhere may make similar
provisions. Consequently, one-to-one career guidance and related support is
rarely a feature of some of these statutory entitlements and is usually peripheral
to other forms of joint obligation in employee support.
Where there are formal requirements for restructuring companies to provide
guidance or guidance-related support, individuals to be made redundant are
often referred to public employment services or, less often, to specialist provision
set up for redundancy contexts, usually within some obligatory notice period.
National reviews in Finland and Norway have acknowledged that PES career
guidance capacity is strongly orientated to meeting the needs of unemployed
people and, in particular, the long-term unemployed, with these services having
limited effectiveness for employees anticipating job loss or newly redundant.
Differentiation of PES services to address reemployment prospects of soon-to-be
redundant workers is rare (European Commission, 2009c).
Statutory referral to guidance and placement services has also been
introduced in some countries in the last two years but it seems a short-term
measure responding to the global financial crisis and recession. In the Slovakia,
for example, there has been additional support in the regional offices of the
Headquarters of Labour (PES) for employees affected by large scale
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redundancies due to the financial crisis ( ), and this seems to be one of the few
active labour market measures targeted to employees at risk of redundancy.
Evidence from comparative research and from national sources suggests that
beyond limited safety nets, much of the use of career guidance as a socially
responsible measure in managing restructuring is discretionary. However, there
seem to be two specific exceptions in the reviewed countries, Germany and
Sweden. In the latter, collective bargaining practices supporting socially
responsible restructuring have evolved to provide for significant but not universal
support, and this is shaped through legislation (Storrie, 2007). The 1974

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( ) This specifically excludes in national project 100 the more vibrant regional economy of
Bratislava.

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