The New Concept of a ‘Worker’ in the Field of Collective Dismissals

Abstract

[EN] The most striking element in the delimitation of collective dismissal is the establishment of a numerical-percentage threshold from which an essentially individual act, such as dismissal, is transformed, for procedural purposes, into another act of collective significance. This quantitative component becomes qualitative when the focus of attention is established in the literal reference to "habitually employed workers". Here, the first of the elements of interest for the study appears, given by the notion of worker. Next to this, the personal nature of this component is translated into two other unavoidable references, such as the habitual nature of the service and the causes not inherent to the worker's person.