Interesting interpretation of the civil section of the supreme court regarding the employment relationship in the case of transfer of business and collective dismissal

The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in cases involving “employment relations” is enriched by another ruling. In ruling no. 00-2022-946 (215), dated 06.06.2022 of the Civil Panel of the Supreme Court, a case was examined concerning company X, which by written agreement transfers a quantity of wells and assets as well as the list of its employees to company Y. After this moment, company Y starts the procedures for reducing employees, treating it as a collective dismissal of the transferred employees. In fact, the Labor Code establishes that, when the company or part of it is transferred, the transferor of the rights does not extinguish all obligations towards the employees, on the contrary, the transferor of the rights is liable towards the person who acquires such rights for the obligations arising from the employment contract. The Panel considered that in this specific case, we are faced with a transfer of business and consequently there has been a transfer of rights and obligations to company Y that derive from the employment contract that the employees had with company X. Consequently, the Panel considered that, following the transfer of this part of the business, company Y has undertaken to respect all the employment contracts in force before the transfer, with the same rights and obligations in quantity and quality that it had from company X; Subsequently, the Panel found that we are also faced with a collective dismissal which entails the obligation on the part of the employer to comply with the collective dismissal procedure, as provided for by article 148 of the Labour Code, otherwise he is charged with civil liability, obliging himself to compensate the employee; Coming to the conclusion that we are faced with collective dismissal from work and with the transfer of a business, the Panel has assessed that employer Y has the responsibility to compensate the employees, for the notification term procedure and at the same time is obliged to compensate the employee for seniority from work, in the form of material assessment.