Global Business Workforce Restructuring

During two decades of intensive economic globalisation, business firms in nearly every country have undergone mergers, acquisitions, sales, reductions in the workforce, plant closures, and other forms of restructuring. Many legal issues of critical importance to employers arise in the course of such transactions and activities. This book offers clear comparative legal analysis of these issues, derived from the labour and employment law of 12 major trading jurisdictions: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, England and Wales, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and the United States. The emphasis throughout is on answers to practical questions, such as the following: Is a purchasing company required to hire some or all of the employees of a target business?Can the purchaser pick and choose which employees are transferred or hired?Is a purchaser required to assume a target company¿s collective bargaining agreement?What is the nature and timing of notices required of purchasers?Can an acquisition, closure, or reduction in force be delayed by a strike or other industrial action?Can a company dismiss any or all employees at a facility it wants to close?How questions like these are answered in each of the 12 countries is spelled out in detail by panels of outstanding practitioners from each of the jurisdictions. The chapters in this book were developed by the 22 authors from a set of more theoretical papers delivered at a full-day session presented by Committee P (the Employment and Industrial Relations Law Committee of the section on Business Law) at the October 2002 annual conference of the International Bar Association in Durban, South Africa.