Work council

A work council (sometimes called "works council") is a "shop-floor" organization representing workers, which functions as local/firm-level complement to national labour negotiations. Work councils exist with different names in a variety of related forms in a number of European countries, including Britain (Joint Consultative Committee); Germany and Austria (Betriebsrat);^[1][2] Luxembourg (Comité Mixte, Délégation du Personnel); the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium (Ondernemingsraad); France (Comité d'entreprise); Wallonia in Belgium (Conseil d'Entreprise) and Spain (Comité de empresa).

One of the most commonly examined (and arguably most successful) implementations of these institutions is found in Germany. The model is basically as follows: general labour agreements are made at the national level by national unions (e.g. IG Metall) and national employer associations (e.g. Gesamtmetall), and local plants and firms then meet with work councils to adjust these national agreements to local circumstances. Work council members are elected by the company workforce for a four-year term. They don't have to be union members; work councils can also be formed in companies where neither the employer nor the employees are organized.

Work council representatives may also be appointed to the Board of Directors.

As with co-determination, there are three main views about why work councils primarily exist: to reduce workplace conflict by improving and systematising communication channels; to increase bargaining power of workers at the expense of owners by means of legislation; and to correct market failures by means of public policy.

European Works Council

On 22 September 1994, the Council of the European Union passed a Directive (94/45/EC) on the establishment of a European Works Council (EWC) or similar procedure for the purposes of informing and consulting employees in companies which operate at European Union level.

The EWC Directive applies to companies with at least 1,000 employees within the EU and at least 150 employees in each of at least two Member States.

European Works Councils were created partly as a response to increased transnational restructuring brought about by the Single European Act. They give representatives of workers from all European countries in big multinational companies a direct line of communication to top management. They also make sure that workers in different countries are all told the same thing at the same time about transnational policies and plans. Lastly, they give workers’ representatives in unions and national works councils the opportunity to consult with each other and to develop a common European response to employers’ transnational plans, which management must then consider before those plans are implemented.

The EWC Directive was revised by the Council and the European Parliament in May 2009. The changes contained in the new ("Recast") Directive must be transposed into national law by 5 June 2011, and have important implications for all companies in scope of the legislation, both those with an existing European Works Council and those yet to have set one up.

France

Comité d’Entreprise (Work council) is mandatory in any company with 50 employees or more. Members of the C.E. are elected by all the employees, and have 20 hours of delegation. The main role of the C.E. is being the interface between the employees and the members of the board which is constituted of the Chairman and the HR. The number of members depends of the number of people in the company. All members of the C.E. have a monthly meeting with the board, in which very specific points are dealt with.^[3]

Germany

Work councils in Germany have a long history, with their origins in the early 1920s in the post World War I Weimar Republic, established by the Betriebsrätegesetz or Work Council Act. Initially, Unions were very skeptical of Work Councils, seeing them as a way for management to negotiate with employees without employing collective bargaining,^[4] but eventually they developed clearly defined responsibilities with Work Councils not allowed to organize strikes or enforce a wage increase.^[5] In recent years with a decline in union membership, Work Councils have come to be seen as a way for unions to recruit members, specifically by having Work Councils campaign for people to join them.^[6]

In Germany, they serve two functions. The first is called co-determination and is where work councils electing members of the board of directors of German companies. The second is called participation, and means that work councils must be consulted about specific issues and have the right to make proposals to management.^[7] One of the most impressive achievements of the councils is producing incredibly harmonious relations between management and workers, leading to a situation with strong unions and incredibly low strike rate.^[8] This also allows for a lot of coordination between the firm and the workers, resulting in, for example, the ability of many German firms to dramatically scale back the hours of each worker without large scale layoffs during the 2008 financial crisis, and then slowly scaling back up as the recovery took effect. This was all assisted by the Kurzarbeit, a fund that helps workers who have had their hours reduced.^[9]

Work Councils in Germany have been correlated with a number of positive effects. They promote higher wages, even more than collective bargaining (although situations with both will promote wages the highest),^[10] they make firms more productive (although the degree to which they increase productivity can be hard to measure).^[11] and they don’t inhibit investment or innovation.^[12][13] Work councils have also been shown to help women, East German, and foreign workers at a higher rate compared to West German Men.^[10] However, they are correlated lower profitability, likely since they tend to bring higher wages, and there may not be as much benefit in smaller companies as there is in larger ones.^[12]

Funding

The funding represents a small portion of the employees payroll, The minimal legal percentage of 0.404%.^[3]

United States

In the United States, the National Labor Relations Board has held that work councils must be elected, and without interference by the employer, in order to be lawful. The simplest method is that the recognized labor union organizes the elections for work councils. A company union, organized, funded or influenced by the employer, is prohibited under section 8(a)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act^[14] This theory has been upheld in the courts; the controlling case is Electromation, Inc. v. NLRB (1994).^[15][16]

See also

• Co-determination
• Workers' council

References

Further reading

• European Commission (2008) Employee representatives in an enlarged Europe (2 volumes). Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. ISBN 978-92-79-08928-2 (Volume 1), ISBN 978-92-79-08929-9 (Volume 2).
• Fitzgerald, I., Stirling, J. 2004. European Works Councils: Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will?, London, Routledge.
• Lecher, W., Platzer, H., Rub, S., Weiner, K. 2002. European Works Councils: Negotiated Europeanisation: Between Statutory Framework and Social Dynamics, London, Ashgate.
• Thelen, Kathleen. 1993. West European Labor in Transition: Sweden and Germany Compared. World Politics 46, no. 1 (October): 23-49.
• Turner, Lowell. 1998. Fighting for Partnership: Labor and Politics in Unified Germany. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

External links

• European Commission: European Works Council legislation
• Tasks, rights and duties of works council (German)
• ETUC: On the offensive for stronger European Works Councils