The current economic landscape witnesses many company reorganizations. This puts the challenging task of dismissing employee representatives even higher on the agenda. Seeing the difficulty in this task, Herman Craeninckx and Anne-Sophie Tshilembe decided to write an article dedicated to this topic.
In the article they shed their light on certain probing issues that companies need to address when they are considering dismissing so-called protected employees. This type of employees are protected either because they are effective, substitute, or non-elected candidate members of the Works Council and/or of the CPPT (Comité pour la prevention et la protection au travail – committee for prevention and protection at work) or, in certain specific cases, because they are members of the trade union when there is no CPPT at the company. Without pretending they have all the answers, Herman and Anne-Sophie tackle certain practical questions that companies could face when this type of employee should or would be dismissed for economic reasons.
The article reflects that there is no easy way for companies to dismiss employee representatives or non-elected candidates, which is also the result of the protection that was made effective by the law of 19 March 1991. Needless to say, companies need to be on their guard when taking any step in the dismissal procedure to avoid having to pay damages to the employee.
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