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Restructuring

Restructuring is a term used to describe a wide range of activities which lead to the reorganisation of an enterprise. Restructuring can have serious consequences for the workforce as far as levels of employment and terms and conditions of employment offered to workers are concerned.

Topic

Recent updates

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Since 2002, the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) has been monitoring the employment impact of large-scale restructuring events in Europe and covers the 27 EU Member States plus Norway.

Web page

Eurofound research

Restructuring at regional level

Eurofound’s European Jobs Monitor (EJM) monitors structural change in European labour markets, analysing where jobs are being lost and where they are being created. It analyses shifts in the employment structure in terms of occupation and sector, both at Member State and regional level. Recent analysis takes the region rather than the Member States as the main unit of analysis. It shows that a growth of within-country inequality often has a strong regional dimension and places a focus on regionally unbalanced growth.

 

Complementing this research, since 2002 the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) has been monitoring the employment impact of large-scale restructuring events in Europe. Restructuring events include company reorganisation, outsourcing, business closure, downsizing or expansion, mergers & acquisitions, relocation, offshoring and reshoring. The ERM also examines the impact on working conditions. 

 

The ERM restructuring support instruments database provides information on more than 300 measures implemented in the Member States of the EU and Norway. National governments, employers’ organisations and trade unions are among the key bodies providing support measures for companies that are restructuring, as well as for the employees affected. This database can be used to search for EU, domestic, regional and local level support measures. 

Key outputs

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The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions. Many...

26 Septiembre 2022
Publication
Research report
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This report has a dual focus. First, it reviews recent restructuring activity in the EU, from January 2019 up to and including the first impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The...

10 Noviembre 2020
Publication
Research report
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The pilot project The Future of Manufacturing in Europe is an explorative and future-oriented study. It explores the future adoption of some key game-changing technologies and how this adoption can...

10 Abril 2019
Publication
Research report

EU context

The EU institutions jointly proclaimed the European Pillar of Social Rights in November 2017, the principles of which are structured around three categories: equal opportunities and access to the labour market; fair working conditions; and social protection and inclusion. In the area of social dialogue and involvement of workers, the Pillar highlights that workers or their representatives have the right to be informed and consulted in good time on matters relevant to them, in particular on the transfer, restructuring and merger of undertakings and on collective redundancies.

 

European Industrial Relations Dictionary 

Eurofound expert(s)

John Hurley

John Hurley is a senior research manager in the Employment unit at Eurofound. He took up the role of research manager in February 2012. He is responsible for the European...

Senior research manager,
Employment research unit
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Chiara Litardi is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. She works on topics related to restructuring, employment and on upward convergence. She was previously...

Research officer,
Employment research unit
Publications results (131)

El sector de la banca minorista es un terreno fértil para estudiar las repercusiones de la digitalización en el trabajo y el empleo. Los servicios financieros se prestan de forma creciente en línea, sin la intermediación de entidades en contacto con el cliente. Muchos bancos del sector han estado

26 September 2022

El presente informe tiene un doble enfoque. En primer lugar, examina las recientes reestructuraciones que se han producido en la UE, desde enero de 2019, incluidos los primeros efectos de la crisis de la COVID-19. En la segunda parte se presenta un análisis de los casos de reestructuración

10 November 2020

Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) is a unique EU-wide dataset on larger-scale restructuring events, which monitors the announced employment effects of restructuring in the EU28 and Norway. Using reports from selected media titles, the ERM is updated on a daily basis. This report gives

16 May 2019

The pilot project The Future of Manufacturing in Europe is an explorative and future-oriented study. It explores the future adoption of some key game-changing technologies and how this adoption can be promoted, even regionally. The analysis of implications for working life focuses primarily on tasks

10 April 2019

Reshoring – namely the relocation of value chain activities back to the home country or its nearby region – has attracted an increasing interest both among scholars and policymakers. The European Reshoring Monitor is a collaborative project between Eurofound and a consortium of Italian universities

01 April 2019

This report explores the motivations, opportunities and challenges of born globals and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in integrating and managing their global value chains (GVCs). The study also investigates the role of selected policy measures in supporting SME internationalisation, incl

14 December 2018

Using data from the sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), carried out in 2015, the ERM report 2018 examines how workplace factors may influence the relationship between restructuring (with job losses) and the outcomes for employees. It also reviews policy and academic research on good

25 October 2018

The 2016 annual report from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) provides evidence of the employment impact of recent restructuring activity in Europe based on the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and the ERM events database. The thematic part of this year’s report centres on trends

01 February 2017

In the 1990s, Alan Greenspan talked of ‘irrational exuberance’ in the stock markets. Unfounded optimism had driven share prices up to values that no rational analysis of company or country performance could justify. At the end of 2016, the Financial Times marked the end of the year by talking of

26 January 2017

The IMF, in its October World economic outlook, has revised forecasts for global growth downwards to 3.1% in 2016. Sub-par growth in the developed world economies risks perpetuating itself, according to the Fund.

27 October 2016

Online resources results (237)

Economic crisis puts social dialogue in disarray

More than 1,200 bankruptcy proceedings were begun in Belgium in October 2012 according to consultancy firm Graydon [1], a leader in commercial and marketing information and credit and debt management. This was an increase of 7.18% compared with October 2011. [1] http://www.graydon.be

Tense industrial relations at steelworks group

Struggling steelmaking giant ArcelorMittal [1], which operates in 60 countries and employs around 260,000 people worldwide, had a difficult 2012 in Luxembourg where it employs 3,000 workers. Despite uncertainties surrounding the future of ArcelorMittal’s sites in Luxembourg, and after several months

Unions censure cut in consultation period for redundancies

In December 2012, the UK Government confirmed that it intended to make changes to existing statutory provisions requiring consultation over redundancies. The principal change would be to reduce the current 90-day minimum consultation period to 45 days for large scale redundancies affecting more than

Article

Unions agree to wage reduction

According to recent statistics (in Swedish) [1], 62,000 Swedish workers lost their jobs in a surge of redundancies during 2012. While the situation is difficult, the number of redundancies has yet to reach the high levels experienced in 2008–2009. However, recent forecasts issued in a press release

Redundancy payouts decrease

The economic crisis of the past five years, during which a total of almost 250,000 jobs have been lost, has resulted in employers generally providing lower redundancy payouts than in the past. However, the level of enhanced redundancy payable since the start of the recession is not an even one

Article

Airline downgrades collective agreement

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS [1]) is a former government monopoly airline in Sweden, and a major airline in Scandinavia. Ever since air traffic in Europe was deregulated in the mid-1990s, the airline has been struggling to be profitable, as reported in Swedish press articles [2]. As a part of its

Postal workers protest on the streets

Romania’s national postal service, Poşta Română (CNPR [1]), is the country’s biggest postal services operator with a network of 7,100 post offices. In 2011, it employed around 33,000 worker [2] s. [1] http://www.posta-romana.ro [2] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/industrial

Miners’ dispute resolved after underground protest

The Crucea Mine is located in the County of Suceava in Romania’s North-East Region. It is one of the mining sites of the National Uranium Company (CNU [1]), and comes under the control of the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business Environment (MECMA [2]). It supplies uranium to the Cernavodă

Voluntary redundancy scheme at ArcelorMittal Galaţi

Romania’s Galaţi [1] complex steel company was known as Sidex Galaţi until 1989, and was once the largest steel works platform in south-east Europe. It was taken over by Mittal Steel, the predecessor of ArcelorMittal [2], in 2001, and at that time the plant employed 27,597 people. [1] http://www

Unions defend local government job security

The status of municipal administration as the local government in Finland has been guaranteed in its constitution. The municipalities represent the local level of administration in the country and act as fundamental, self-governing administrative units.


Blogs results (6)
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It is less than four weeks since the first large European Coronavirus-related company bankruptcy (Flybe, a British regional airline, on 5 March), but it is clear already that the pandemic is going to disrupt labour markets as seriously as the global financial crisis, if not more so. A large majority

2 Abril 2020
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Trade unions in many EU Member States face the issue of declining membership. This is a fundamental challenge for organised labour, but it is premature to speak about the redundancy unions: when it comes to important decisions affecting the workplace, restructuring being one, trade unions remain a

20 Noviembre 2019
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Company restructuring may hit the headlines less in good times, but it remains a central experience in the working life of many. According to the most recent European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) data, just under one in three (30%) employees in the EU reported that restructuring had taken place

2 Mayo 2019
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Over the past four years a special project delegated to Eurofound has looked in detail at ongoing changes in manufacturing on a global scale, analysed how the industry will change further in the future, and assessed what the impacts will be for Europe. Looking at everything from changes in tasks for

9 Abril 2019
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There are fears that thousands of jobs could be lost in financial services following the UK’s exit from the European Union. This blog piece explores some of the implications of Brexit for London’s financial hub, including the reactions of US banks.

12 Febrero 2018
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In this blog post, Eurofound Research Assistant Eleonora Peruffo takes us through the various updates made to the ERM Restructuring-related legislation database during 2017.

21 Diciembre 2017

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