The European Court of Justice has ruled that over 4,000 members of staff made redundant by the closure of Woolworths and Ethel Austin, will not be receiving compensation.
This final ruling was made under UK law; it states that employees in stores with less than 20 workers are excluded from any obligation to be consulted on redundancies and are not qualified for any compensation.
Since Woolworths’ closure in 2008, the shopworkers’ union Usdaw has been fighting for the redundancy pay that staff in larger stores qualified for. This latest verdict marks the end of that struggle, a result they describe as “a kick in the teeth”.
