Social Selection

A statutory selection process required for redundancy-based dismissals under § 1 (3) Kündigungsschutzgesetz, under which the employer must select the employees with the lowest social protection needs.

Relevant criteria are length of service, age, maintenance obligations and any severe disability. The employer may exclude individual employees from the selection if their continued employment is in the legitimate operational interest of the business – for example because of specific knowledge, skills, performance or to preserve a balanced workforce structure.

In practice, errors in the social selection are one of the most common reasons why redundancy dismissals are declared invalid by the labour court. Employees have a statutory right to be informed of the underlying criteria (§ 1 (3) sentence 1 KSchG) – the answer often delivers the decisive arguments for a dismissal protection claim.