Type: Judgment

Authority: European Authorities: Euopean Union' Court of Justice

Date: 07/29/2010

Subject: The Court, interpreting the Directive 2001/23/EC on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the safeguarding of employees’ rights in the event of transfers of undertakings, businesses or parts of undertakings or businesses, affirmed that a transferred economic entity preserves its autonomy, provided that the powers granted to those in charge of that entity, within the organisational structures of the transferor, namely the power to organise the work within that entity in the pursuit of its specific economic activity and the powers to give orders and instructions, to allocate tasks to employees of the entity concerned and to determine the use of assets available to the entity, all without direct intervention from other organisational structures of the employer, remain, within the organisational structures of the transferee, essentially unchanged. The mere change of those ultimately in charge cannot in itself be detrimental to the autonomy of the entity transferred, except where those who have become ultimately in charge have available to them powers which enable them to organise directly the activities of the employees of that entity and therefore to substitute their decision-making within that entity for that of those immediately in charge of the employees.

Parties: Federación de Servicios Públicos de la UGT (UGT FSP)

Classification: Solidarity - Art. 28 Rights of workers, employers and their organisations: organisation - Rights of workers, employers and their organisations: negotiations - Rights of workers, employers and their organisations: collective actions

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