| مستخلص: |
Article 69 (1) of the Labour Code transposing the provisions of Article 2 (1) of Council Directive 98/59/CE of 20 July 1998 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to collective redundancies provides that the employer has the obligation to initiate, in due time and with the aim of reaching an agreement, under the conditions provided by law, consultations with the trade union or, as the case may be, with the representatives of the employees. In the absence of union or non-union workers’ representatives within the unit, the Romanian law does not impose on the employer the obligation to carry out the information and individual consultation of the workers affected by the envisaged collective dismissal. The recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union reveals that Directive 98/59/EC does not oppose to such a national regulation which does not provide an obligation for the employer to individually consult the workers affected by an envisaged collective dismissal, when these workers have not designated workers’ representatives, and which does not compel the mentioned workers to make such a designation. According to Directive 98/59/EC, the Member States have, nevertheless, the obligation to adopt all the measures useful for the appointment of representatives of the workers and to ensure that the workers are not in a situation where, for reasons independent of their will, they are prevented from appointing these representatives. The study highlights that the national legislation that regulates the appointment of the workers’ representatives does not guarantee the full effect of the Directive 98/59/EC, on the one hand, because it places the initiative of appointing the representatives exclusively on the workers, who are the vulnerable part of the employment relationship, and, on the other hand, because mandatory, permanent forms of workers’ representation are not established at unit level, as it is the case in other European legal systems. De lege ferenda, it is proposed either to impose on the employer the legal obligation to inform the workers about the need to appoint their representatives, giving them a reasonable term in this regard, depending on the circumstances, or to regulate a mandatory form of representation of workers within the unit, which should allow the unitary support of the interests of all workers affected by the collective dismissal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
