Marks & Clerk, an international firm specialising in intellectual property, has announced it will make 28 of its 30 employees in Luxembourg redundant.

The firm’s office in the country is to be closed, with the two remaining positions filled by an employee on a fixed-term contract and one senior manager.

The OGBL, Luxembourg’s largest union, said the announcement was made without prior consultation.

“Despite the major consequences for employees and their families, the management of Marks & Clerk LLP has so far refused to negotiate a fair and balanced redundancy plan with the staff delegation,” the union said in a statement.

The OGBL pointed out that a social plan must be negotiated within 15 days of notification.

“This first deadline expired on 22 July 2025, without any significant progress having been made,” the union said.

The case was therefore referred to the National Conciliation Office (ONC), and an initial meeting was held on Monday.

According to the union, the meeting was not fruitful. “The management of Marks & Clerk still shows no willingness to change its position or to engage seriously in negotiations. In accordance with the procedure, a new 15-day deadline has been set,” the OGBL said.

If no agreement is reached by 19 August, the law states that the employer will be entitled to proceed with redundancies by applying only the minimum legal conditions, without negotiating a redundancy scheme.

In addition to financial compensation, the OGBL is demanding a “substantial” budget for training and professional retraining, as well as concrete efforts to redeploy the employees concerned within the group.

“These measures are essential, because the employees concerned work in a highly specialised sector, intellectual property, where job opportunities in Luxembourg are very limited,” the OGBL said in a statement.

The union emphasises that Marks & Clerk made a profit of more than €24 million for the 2024 financial year, before partners’ remuneration. “This represents an increase of more than 20% compared with the 2023 financial year,” the OGBL said.

(This article was originally published by Virgule. Machine translated, with editing and adaptation by Alex Stevensson.)