Involving European Works Councils in Transnational Negotiations - a Positive Functional Advance in Their Operation or Trespassing?**

Zusammenfassung

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This paper aims at discussing some facets of the emerging European level of collective negotiations. The paper argues that in general the acquis communautaire and other international acts can already accommodate this new category of agreements. At the same time it finds out that lack of a specific legal framework may have negative implications for the binding force of the agreements in question and for their enforcement. The existence of those agreements beyond or parallel to law causes hence confusion in regard to roles that the social partners at the national and the European level should play. Thus, in order to put some structure into the debate, it is argued that a differentiation between, on the one hand, national collective bargaining and transnational collective agreements or negotiations, and, on the other hand, consultation and negotiation powers should be applied.

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Auszug

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Involving European Works Councils in Transnational Negotiations - a Positive Functional Advance in Their Operation or Trespassing?**

Introduction1

Over a decade after the entry into force of Directive 94/45/EC, European Works Councils (EWCs) are a well established dimension of European industrial relations and have become the most deeply rooted instrument of transnational employee representation. With some 830 (EWC Database of ETUI-REHS, 2007) EWCs currently in active operation, they are by far the most numerous supranational forum for transnational dialogue at the enterprise level, contributing actively to the development and reinforcement of the European Social Model. Their emergence in the 1980s in the form of the French comité de groupe ded to the adoption of the EU-wide legal framework in 1994, setting the path for other multinational companies and their employees. In consequence of this unprecedented experiment in introducing elements of democracy into a workplace on the Community level and into the practice of corporate governance, information and consultation rights for employees in multinational companies are now an intrinsic feature of the economic reality of the EU. The fruits of the positive experience with specific bodies dedicated to safeguarding employee rights of information and consultation in an enterprise include further directives strengthening this entitlement on various levels: on the national level, by introducing works councils at plant level (Directive 2002/14/EC); at the transnational level in the form of works councils and board-level representation, embodied by non-executive employee directors in Supervisory Board (e.g. MAN Diesel SE, Allianz SE, Strabag SE), in a Societas Europea (SE); again, securing an organized structure for information and consultation rights at the transnational level in a European Cooperative Society (SCE). Even though workers' rights to information and consultation, or even co-management on board level in SEs, are currently secured in many provisions of the acquis communautaire, it is EWCs that have accumulated the most experience of all.

Development of transnational collective negotiations in Europe as a functional development of EWC performance

Indeed, there are currently 406 active EWCs (ca. 50% of all active EWCs) which have a record going back ten years or more. This signifies a collective experience and expertise of EWC members participating in these bodies, EWC coordinators from European Industry Federations (EIFs) assisting them, and trade union officers supporting their work. These 406 EWCs represent a powerful potential developed over years in many challenging situations such as restructuring, collective redundancies, me...

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