ABSTRACT
The European Works Council (EWC) Directive in 1994 was seen as a significant development within European industrial relations and the outcome of exhaustive political negotiations. The question of worker participation had always been central to the aspirations of the European Union’s (EU) social dimension but significant steps had been virtually non-existent since the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The eventual Directive required transnational companies (TNCs) within the EU to develop specific structures and systems of cross-border consultation with their employees (see the introduction to this text). It responded to an ongoing concern within the international labour movement with regard to the regulation of new forms of international capital. The long-term expectations of the trade union movement, and indeed the European Commission, emerging from the EWC Directive are therefore far reaching. Research within this complex area of industrial relations straddles the issues of economic and political convergence in the EU, the changing strategies of TNCs, the declining significance of national sectoral collective bargaining arrangements and the institutional and political complexity of European trade unions. These broad areas of research are now being further explored following the implementation of the EWC Directive and the challenge the new structures pose for the European labour movement. Coming to firm conclusions with regard to these developments is obviously unwise at this early stage.
