Over 24,000 former employees of the now folded Woolworths chain are set to share a compensation payout of around £67.8million.

An Employment Tribunal in London released the judgement on Friday, which ruled that the Woolworths administrators had failed in their legal obligation to consult the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) before making mass redundancies as the firm collapsed at the end of 2008.

As a result, the tribunal ruled that former employees should be awarded compensation of 60 days’ pay, capped at £330 a week; the highest possible amount that can be awarded in such cases.

However, the ruling does not apply to employees from some of Woolworth’s smaller stores, where fewer than 20 redundancies were made. This means that over 3000 employees from around 180 Woolworths stores may never receive compensation.

Usdaw general secretary John Hannett said: “My delight at the award for the vast majority of our members is tempered by the clear injustice that workers in smaller stores could miss out. Usdaw thinks that UK’s current interpretation of the law on collective redundancies is both unfair and possibly a breach of the European Directive which seeks to protect workers in large scale redundancy situations.

“We are taking further expert legal advice and it is highly likely we will appeal against this part of the judgement.”