Connecting and communicating: European Works Council training for global labour networks

There has been a consistent dichotomy in the analysis of European Works Councils (EWCs) that has developed into broadly optimistic and pessimistic traditions and these have been reflected in the other chapters in this book and in earlier arguments from ourselves (Miller and Stirling 1999; Stirling and Fitzgerald 2001). This is not the place to rehearse them again but rather I argue here for an optimistic view of EWCs as an important agency of trade union organisation and strategy that must ultimately break from their European constraints.