ABSTRACT
Commercial enterprises have become increasingly global, while employees’ collective-participation arrangements tend to lack global reach; this means that decisions affecting employee interests might be made unilaterally at distant head offices. In the face of employer hostility, the EU has made numerous attempts to deliver European-wide integrated systems of representative participation to confront worker vulnerability. The most far-reaching of these initiatives has been European Works Councils (EWCs), established in the mid-1990s to provide substantial centralised information and consultation rights to employees of transnational companies with operations in the EU.
Since the establishment of EWCs, there have been two main developments: with EU expansion, the number of countries covered by EWC provisions has grown; and in 2009 the directive covering EWCs was revised to resolve shortcomings. The main problems have been the following: reconciling a pan-European participation framework with national systems of employment relations; the number of eligible companies establishing EWCs (less than half of those eligible); the many loopholes that employers can exploit and against which there are limited sanctions; managerial policy, focusing more on communication and information than consultation; and sometimes perfunctory training for representatives. Studies suggest that, since the revision, many issues have yet to be resolved.
