European works council

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The European Works Council ( EWC ) is an employee representation in cross-border companies in the European Union or in the European Economic Area , which has the right to information and consultation by management. His responsibility is limited to decisions and developments that have cross-border effects on the employees of the company or group of companies.

prehistory

A Europe-wide, cross-border employee representation has been demanded by the trade unions since the 1960s as a necessary addition to national interest groups. But ideas about it diverged considerably. Only the majority procedure introduced in 1992 based on the amended EC Treaty and the introduction of the European internal market made a breakthrough possible. Since none of the concepts discussed earlier turned out to be feasible and capable of receiving a majority, the EU Commission pursued a completely new approach. Instead of a uniform legal regulation for all European countries, effective cross-border agreements should be negotiated between employee representatives and the central management of the company.

Legal basis

The legal basis of the EWC (which does not have to be called that in all companies) is the European Works Council Directive of September 22, 1994, which was amended on May 6, 2009. The directive was implemented in Germany by the law on European works councils (EBRG) of October 28, 1996. The aim of the directive is to create cross-border employee representation with consultation and information rights in companies operating across Europe. The criteria for a Community-wide, EWC-obliged company provide that it has at least 1,000 employees in the member states and that at least 150 employees are employed in at least two member states. The guideline also applies to the branches of international corporations located in EU countries that have their headquarters outside the EU.

The directive has now been implemented in national law in the 27 EU countries, albeit in a very heterogeneous manner, in line with national preferences. On June 18, 2011, numerous changes to the European Works Council Act came into force in Germany. These specify the right to information and consultation and establish the right to further training of the EWC. This means that the European EWC Directive 2009/38 / EC has largely been implemented in German law. EWC agreements concluded earlier are subject to grandfathering. If both sides so wish, the agreements do not have to be completely renegotiated automatically even if the company structure changes.

As the central institution for the constitution of an EWC, the guideline defines the "special negotiating body" of the employees, whose voting mode is not further specified. The more detailed regulations are left to national legislation. The aim is to negotiate an agreement on the composition and powers of an EWC to be set up. Minimum requirements are listed in the annex to the directive. These “subsidiary regulations” stipulate that the EWC has at least three and a maximum of 30 members, that a meeting with central management takes place once a year in which they discuss the “likely development of the business, production, sales and employment situation "Changes in the organization, introduction of new working procedures, relocations, mergers or closures". The EWC can give its opinion on this and has to inform the employee representatives at the national locations about the content and results of the information and consultation.

The decision on the establishment of an EWC is made in negotiations between the special negotiating body for the employees and the central management of the company operating across Europe. Negotiations are started at the initiative of central management or the employees (at least 100 employees from two companies from two Member States). The negotiating body and central management are autonomous in drafting the agreement. The negotiating body can consult union representatives and experts.

The EWC is usually located at the top of the group. If this is not based in one of the EU countries, it must name a representative (e.g. European Commissioner) as a negotiating partner, otherwise the management of the company with the highest number of employees in a member state is responsible for the negotiations.

Due to historical differences in employee representation in the individual European countries, the directive only prescribes minimum requirements for such a works council. These consist of information and consultation rights, but not of co-determination rights, as the German works council is entitled to. It can therefore be compared to a European economic committee, similar to the one provided for by the Works Constitution Act for German companies with more than 100 employees.

The information and consultation rights can easily conflict with the regulations to prevent insider trading according to Section 13 WpHG .

Implementation in the national law of other EU countries

The legal implementation of the directive in national law took very different forms. In Austria it took place in Part V of the Labor Constitution Act (§§ 171 - 207). In the EU accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this was mostly done by simply inserting appropriate provisions in the labor laws, not by special law.

Dissemination and further development

After a wave of founding in 1994/1996, which did not lead to increased transnational communication and coordination with regard to the goals, since the activities of the EWC were often limited to one information event per year, there has been increased transnational contacts between members and one another in recent years to a real dialogue with employers. In June 2015, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) counted a total of 1071 companies operating across Europe with an EWC compared to 402 companies in 1996.

According to the ETUI, the number of new EWCs founded in 2010 fell to its lowest level since 1994 (only 11). The EWCs active in 2011 represented around 18 million employees. EWCs could be set up in 1,500 other companies. In the organizational area of IG Metall alone , which also includes employees in the electrical, wood, plastics, textile and clothing industries, there were 320 EWCs in 2015.

Although legally limited to information and consultation rights, the EWC has developed into a strong negotiating body in individual cases. The European Employee Forum , as the EWC is called at General Motors, has concluded several framework agreements with its European management since 2000 to secure the location.

While the trade union umbrella organization IndustriALL can negotiate cross-sectoral or European branch unions with employers, this possibility does not exist for them in the case of negotiating group-specific agreements. Since the turn of the millennium, European works councils have been involved in the conclusion of transnational agreements at corporate level in addition to company management and an industry union operating at European or international level. The objects of this agreement are z. B. Restructuring, occupational health and safety, further training and mobility, data protection, equality and fundamental rights, as set out in the core labor standards of the ILO . The agreements must then be converted into national agreements. The respective options for action of the European works councils are to be explored in each individual case.

According to empirical studies, the most important support for the establishment and goal-setting of EWCs comes from the trade unions (“obstetrics”). B. in the framework of the Leonardo project TEAM.EWC , in which training material for the intercultural team cooperation of the works councils to be organized is developed and made available.

EWC and Brexit

In the event of the United Kingdom leaving the EU due to the referendum of June 2016 ( Brexit ), British employees would no longer have the right to work on the EWC.

However, if a UK-based group has branches in more than one EU country that reach the minimum size stipulated in the European directive, the other members continue to be entitled to an EWC and thus to information and consultation. Thus, in the event of a Brexit, this important industrialized country will not automatically be out of the reach of European employee representatives.

rating

According to the judgment of a scientist close to the union, the EWC is “an example of a perfectly balanced mixture of subsidiarity (national adjustment through implementation), proportionality (cooperation between governments and associations in their creation and implementation) and flexibility (the directive opens up various options for implementation ) ".

According to a study by Jeremy Waddington, EWCs rights are often ignored in practice. Only a minority of EWCs are informed before decisions are finally made (24 percent) or made public (37 percent). 13 percent of the EWCs are not informed at all and 30 percent are not heard.

literature

  • Federal Employers 'Association Chemistry, Total Metal, Federal Association of German Employers' Associations (Ed.): The European Works Council in Practice , 2011 (with synopsis of the EBRG old and new version)
  • Florian Guckeisen: European Works Council - A body without influence? , Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8366-4094-7
  • Vera Glassner, Susanne Pernicka, Nele Dittmar: “Working on the Conflict” - A case study on the European works council of General Motors. In: WSI-Mitteilungen vol. 69, no. 4, 2016, pp. 264–272.
  • Elena Heimann: Substantive agreements between European works councils: Practice and law. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2014.
  • Hermann Kotthoff: Apprenticeship with the European works council. Ten years of transnational employee representation. Edition Sigma , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-8360-8671-4 .
  • Wolfgang Lecher, Bernhard Nagel, Hans-Wolfgang Platzer: The Constitution of European Works Councils - From Information Forum to Actor? Nomos, Baden-Baden 1998, ISBN 3-7890-5293-0 .
  • Wolfgang Lecher, Hans-Wolfgang Platzer, Stefan Rüb, Klaus-Peter Weiner: European works councils - perspectives for their development and networking . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, ISBN 3-7890-6065-8 .
  • Jeremy Waddington: What do European works councils do? - The perspective of the employee representatives . In: WSI-Mitteilungen , Vol. 59, H. 6, 2006, pp. 560-567.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Directive 94/45 / EC of the Council of September 22nd, 1994 on the establishment of a European works council or the creation of a procedure for the information and consultation of employees in companies and groups of companies operating across the Community . In: Official Journal of the European Union . L 254 of September 30, 1994, p. 64.
  2. ↑ Directive 2009/38 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 May 2009 on the establishment of a European works council or the creation of a procedure for the information and consultation of employees in companies and groups of companies operating throughout the Community . In: Official Journal of the European Union . L 122 of 16 May 2009, p. 28.
  3. ↑ BGBl. I p. 1548
  4. ↑ Website of the Boeckler Foundation ( Memento of the original dated May 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed July 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.boeckler.de
  5. ↑ In Germany regulated in § 8 Paragraph 1 EBRG
  6. ↑ Part V of the Austrian ArbVG
  7. ^ National laws in English translation
  8. ^ Stan De Spiegelaere, Romuald Jagodzinski: European Works Councils and SE Works Councils in 2015. Facts and figures . Link to the German version on the ETUI website, p. 12/13
  9. ↑ Rolf Jaeger: European Works Council - What you should know Working paper prepared on behalf of the Hans Böckler Foundation , December 2011, p. 6
  10. ↑ European works councils in IG Metall - workers network in Europe , IG Metall website, accessed on April 1, 2016
  11. ↑ Romuald Jagodzinski: EWCs in the new Member States. Case Study: GM Opel September 2015 (English)
  12. ↑ That means the member unions of the European Industry Federation ( European trade union federation ) in Europe or the Global Union Federation (GUF) in the broader international context
  13. ↑ Romuald Jagozinski: Involving European Works Councils in Transnational Negotiations - a Positive Functional Advance or In Their operation Trespassing? In: Industrial Relations , Volume 14, Issue 4, 2007, pp. 316–333.
  14. ↑ TEAM.EWC - this is how the EWC becomes a work team! Website of the BWS Society for Education, Knowledge, Seminar of IG BCE mbH, accessed on March 2, 2018
  15. ^ Wolfgang Lecher: European works councils - the fourth level of company interest representation . In: WSI-Mitteilungen , Volume 49, 1996, p. 469.
  16. ^ Jeremy Waddington: European Works Councils and Industrial Relations: A Transnational Industrial Relations Institution in the Making. Routledge, 2010.