Originally Posted by
moral_low_ground
Whilst the rest of the EU, in general, has "better" labor laws (than the UK), I doubt if they would protect against this. As we see with Lufthansa, staff are being laid off due to financial difficulties and in Germany there is no redundancy pay or a tax free sum like we have in the UK (although the unemployment benefit and state welfare is much better (in Germany). During good times it is hard to fire staff in the EU, but in bad times there are situations where the UK is actually not so bad. Either way, I am always appalled at how a lot of employers lay people off and completely forget there is a human being that is no doubt going to be facing hard times.
That depends: German labour law in general allows you to cut staff numbers when a company is in trouble, but you have to select the individuals along socially responsible criteria (i.e. someone working there for 20 years with 5 children stays, the new joiner without a family goes). Because that doesn't necessarily mean that the top performers are staying, most companies will prefer the VR route. If a company chooses the non-VR route then it is either in a very low skilled industry or the company is in extremely deep trouble.
What would not happen in most European countries is that a company can blackmail employees into lower paid contracts by threat of redundancy.