Employment Law News Alert
- Finland
- 04/07/2010
- Roschier, Attorneys Ltd. - Finland
Background
In 2000 Fujitsu Siemens Computers Oy, a Finnish subsidiary of the Netherlands company Fujitsu Siemens Computers BV, closed its production facility located in Espoo, Finland and made 450 employees redundant. The closing of the facility was preceded by codetermination negotiations. The negotiations were initiated on 14 December 1999 and concluded end January 2000 after a negotiation period of six weeks, the minimum provided by the Finnish Co-determination Act. After conclusion of the negotiations, the subsidiary’s board of directors made a decision to discontinue a major part of its operations.
The executive council of the parent company, consisting of the executive members of its board of directors, had on 7 December 1999 decided to make a proposal to the board of directors for the divestiture of the Espoo facility. On 14 December 1999 the parent’s board of directors considered centralization of the group’s production facilities. According to the minutes of the meeting, no specific decision concerning the Espoo facility was made. On 16 February 2000 the parent’s board of directors merely noted the result of the codetermination negotiations without making any decision on the matter.
Trade unions acting as plaintiffs in the matter instituted legal proceedings against the subsidiary, claiming compensation for breach of codetermination obligations. The trade unions stated that the parent company factually on 14 December 1999 at the latest had made a decision to close the Espoo factory and that codetermination negotiations should have been carried out before such decision was made. The trade unions’ claims were dismissed in the first two instances. The Supreme Court granted them leave to appeal.
