Chambers Guide 2021

Cruzlaw recently agreed to participate in the Chambers, Employment 2021 Global Practice Guide. In a world that has become much more global, where cross-border relationships, acquisitions, etc, have become standard practice, it is crucial to have sufficient insight into the local employment laws that can have an impact on the global situation. The different approach based on national culture and heritage is also apparent in a combined market such as the EU. Although the EU is competent to impose social principles throughout the EU, it is always up to the individual member states to implement these principles in their national law. This often results in different practical implementations in local laws, such as the TUPE Directive.

Employment law is designed as the instrument to protect the weaker party against the (arbitrary discretion of the) stronger party. At first, this protection focused essentially on the individual relationship. Early 20th-century focus also started to switch to the collective relationship: union representation of the employees etc. That is why a comparative view on the local employment laws is essential in international relations. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the fact that knowledge of one’s own local laws is not enough to manage globalised employee-employer relationships. Although this pandemic has affected the whole world since March 2020, legal initiatives in response to it were mainly taken at the local level. This resulted in a variety of measures which proved to be quite distinctive and sometimes contradictory, country-by-country. A clear example was Sweden, which originally focused on collective immunity and did not enact restrictive measures (closures of shops, lockdown, etc), compared to countries such as France and Spain which implemented very strict lockdown rules.

The new Employment 2021 guide covers 52 jurisdictions. The guide provides the latest legal information on the legislative initiatives to cope with the COVID-19 crisis, terms of employment, non-compete and non-solicitation clauses, data privacy law, foreign workers, the role of unions and employee representative bodies, termination of employment, employment disputes and dispute resolution. The Gibraltar chapter was authored by Nick Cruz and you can download and read it here.

This guide, using an outline template review country-by-country, spread across the globe, describes the nature and scope of the legal framework governing the employment relationship. The outline covers not just the typical topics for employment professionals – such as wages, benefits and health benefits laws – but also regulations more broadly affecting organisations, such as union organisation, immigration, data privacy and retaliation restrictions, and anti-discrimination rules in the workplace. The whole guide is available via the Chambers website or click the link here.

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