ABSTRACT
European Works Councils (EWCs) were introduced by the European Council of Secretaries in 1994 as a new mechanism of interest mediation at the European level. Their legal basis is a complex multilevel framework of supranational European law, intergovernmental treaties, national implementation law and transnational agreements at company level. Furthermore, the nature of EWCs is interesting because they are effectively European lawbased non-profit organisations working and embedded in national law-based profit organisations. Despite the fact that only about one third of all companies falling under the EWC directive actually have a EWC, their significance and impact upon labour regulation at a transnational level should not be underestimated. In times when the European Union consisted of fifteen member states they represented a total of about 17 million people working in companies with a EWC. Taking into consideration the new EU member states the number of people receiving direct representation is even higher. Meanwhile some scholars hold that EWCs are an unsuitable instrument to
cope with economic globalisation. Yet again others stress that EWCs are the most powerful and effective means of organising and expressing workers’ interests at a supranational level. Empirical findings underline, on the one hand, the major impact of national headquarters’ patterns of labour regulation upon the European culture of interest negotiation. On the other hand, certain studies reveal a European dimension of logic and dynamic influencing interest bargaining at the company level. Whereas some students maintain the dominance of a centre-periphery constellation of power and resources in EWCs, others emphasise findings of decentralised and primarily polycentric power structures. In this chapter it is argued that an organisational research approach may serve to enrich and differentiate the traditionally industrial relations-focused research and discussion on EWCs. In this perspective the issue of emerging transnational organisation figures of EWCs is crucial in estimating the dimension and impact of EWCs as border-crossing bodies of labour regulation. The chapter begins by sketching a brief history of the emergence of EWCs
as a new type of labour regulation and border-crossing organisation and
then goes on to present some empirical findings and the state of the art in empirical research on EWCs stating that the corresponding studies focus on an industrial relations approach and a capital-labour view. In a second step an alternative perspective in viewing the EWC as a special type of international non-profit organisation is proposed and global, focal, multinational and transnational organisations will be differentiated. A third section will present the case of General Motors Europe providing an example of what a transnational EWC looks like. Finally, some general hypotheses on the spread, conditions and dynamics of transnational EWCs are developed.
