Planning For Redundancies – A Legal Perspective

In view of the current scenario we are facing with the COVID-19 pandemic and with the economic repercussions reverberating across the globe, some companies will need to take painful but necessary steps to survive the storm. In a previous article entitled "How can an employer strive to avoid redundancy?" reference is made to various options that employers may take to save jobs while diminishing the impact to their operation. Whilst making employees redundant is often seen as a last resort, this may be the only viable option in some circumstances and in this article, we shall look at the legal implications and the salient features when taking such action.

Unlike countries like the US where an employer can make employees redundant at will, Maltese legislation protects employees from redundancies that do not have an economic justification. Tribunal interpretations indicate that the main reasons for which a redundancy may be resorted to, are fundamentally two: