[2716057]

German here. I would be very interested in the government agency you are alluding to.

There are laws regulating layoffs due to operating conditions (Kuendigungsschutzgesetz). But these laws do not allow the government to intervene directly in company affairs - that would be communism! If a company wants to restructure "for internal reasons" (rationalizations are specifically mentioned) it is allowed to do so. This includes offshoring, moving workload to contractors, or simply getting rid of a department.

However: many of the large companies (eg. SAP, BASF, carmakers,...) have collective labor agreements. These agreements often exclude layoffs due to operational conditions within a certain period. Under very special circumstances layoffs are still possible in such arrangements, but the companies have to prove their economic hardship and the layoffs often end with a sort of golden handshake. If they happen at all :)

[perlgeek]

I've read up a bit on it, and it seems I was wrong. I was under the impression that some kind of regulatory body that told Google that they don't have a good enough reason to lay off people, but it might have been their own council.

To lay off somebody, a company needs a reason, and the bar for being laid off because of redundancy is pretty high. You have to be able to proof that either the economic situation is bad enough that other measures don't help, or that their labor had been automated away, or other possible reasons that don't apply here (like seasons for seasonal workers).