Box 18.3 European Works Councils Directive: key features
- adopted in September 1994 by the EU Council of Ministers under the
social policy protocol of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty covering 14 member
states (excluding the UK). - extended to the UK in December 1997 following the UK Government’s
adoption of the social chapter of the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty; now
applies to the 18 countries of the EEA. - requires ‘Community-scale’ companies to establish European-level proce-
dures for employee information and consultation on transnational
matters, a process triggered by a request from representatives of employees
in more than one country. - ‘Community-scale’ companies defined as those with 1,000 or more
employees in the EEA and operations employing 150 or more in at least
two EEA states. - estimated to cover 1,800 MNCs, including the EEA operations of compa-
nies headquartered in the US, Japan and other non-EEA countries. - gives precedence to arrangements negotiated between management and
employee representatives to establish an EWC over the statutory model
specified in the directive, which acts as a default option. - as of late 2001, agreements had been concluded establishing some 700
EWCs at either group or international division level within MNCs; the
largest number were in German-based MNCs (125), followed by US- and
UK based MNCs (105 and 100 respectively), then French-based MNCs
(77). There were 50 agreements in Dutch-based, 45 in Swedish-based, 42
in Swiss-based and 22 in Italian-based MNCs.
Box 18.4 European Works Council: geographical scope
and sectoral diffusion
- The precedence which the directive accords to agreements negotiated
between the parties to establish EWCs leaves scope for the conclusion of
arrangements which extend beyond the EEA in their geographical cover-
age. First, in almost all cases European-level structures have been estab-
lished, although management and employee representatives in a handful
of MNCs, including Endesa, Renault, SKF and VW, have (also) established
world-wide bodies. Second, a considerable minority of EWCs provide for
representation from operations in European countries outside the EEA.
One in five agreements extends coverage to Switzerland and a similar pro-
portion to one or more of the countries of central Europe (Carley and
Marginson, 2000). Considerations of companies’ production and man-
agement organization within Europe, rather than the political boundaries
of the EEA, are driving the way in which ‘Europe’ is operationalized. These
findings are consistent with the concept of the Eurocompany.
The Eurocompany and European Works Councils 469