D2P‘s partner Miloš Andrejević, in the latest Legal Insight, examines the risks employers face when engaging third parties for positions previously eliminated due to redundancy.
The article starts from a Federal Court of Australia ruling, in which Qantas Airways was fined AUD 90 million for the unlawful dismissal of more than 1,800 employees during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent engagement of external contractors for their roles. This case, the largest of its kind in Australian history, highlights the serious risks that arise when redundancies are followed by the outsourcing of the same positions.
From a Serbian perspective, the article reviews relevant provisions of the Labour Law and analyses two recent court decisions. The Supreme Court confirmed the employer’s right to organize work through external service providers, while the Court of Appeal in Belgrade emphasized that re-employing staff in the same roles shortly after dismissal may constitute an abuse of rights.
The Legal Insight underscores that redundancies are a particularly sensitive area of labour law and that employers must act with special care both during the process and afterward.
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