Current studies in the run-up to the planned legislation

How do European Works Councils function, what are the challenges, what are the solutions to existing problems? These questions were investigated in an empirical study commissioned by BusinessEurope, the umbrella organisation of employers' associations and published by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in Dublin...

Finnish engineering group has to stop relocating its production

On 23 September 2022, the Trieste Labour Court issued an injunction order to put a halt to the dismissal of 451 Wärtsilä production workers at its San Dorligo della Valle site and ordered the company to pay €150,000 in damages to the three applicant unions. The management had announced collective redundancies...

Swiss temporary staffing firm must pay fine in London

The Employment Appeal Tribunal in London ruled against Adecco on 13 December 2022. The UK subsidiary in its role as central management (acting on behalf of management in the non-EU country of Switzerland) had lost against the EWC in the first instance proceedings before the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), in March 2021...

Directive on adequate minimum wages has come into force

On 14 September 2022, 505 MEPs voted in favour of the Minimum Wage Directive, 92 voted against and 44 abstained. On 4 October 2022, it was finally adopted at a meeting of the Ministers of Economy of the EU countries in Luxembourg. Already in June 2022, the European Parliament...

Who has how much influence in the European Parliament?

On 18 October 2022, the think tank EU Matrix in Brussels presented a study that examines the influence that European Parliament Members and political groups have on EU legislation and on the positions of the Parliament in general. EU Matrix specialises in examining the EU's political machinery...

The Eurozone expands: Croatia switches currency

On 1 January 2023, Croatia will switch from the national currency, the Kuna, to the euro and become the twentieth country in the eurozone. It is the first entry into the common currency since 2015, when Lithuania adopted the euro. Croatia has only been a member of the EU since 2013, and is a relatively small and...

Severance compensation in France violates European Social Charter

On 26 September 2022, the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe published its decision on the severance payment tables (the so-called "Barème Macron") that have been applied in cases of unfair dismissal since September 2017. These legally imposed upper-limits violate Article 24 of the European Social Charter...

Will easyJet's EWC end up in Berlin or Luton?

On 4 November 2022, the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London ruled on whether the UK courts have jurisdiction for European Works Council disputes post-Brexit. The judge upheld the Central Arbitration Committee's (CAC) decision from June 2021 by which UK companies remain subject to UK EWC law (TICER)...

German lift manufacturer with outstanding EWC agreement

An EWC agreement was signed for TK Elevator on 21 June 2022. The company with 50,000 employees worldwide is based in Düsseldorf and has been owned by financial investors since August 2020. Under the umbrella of the former parent company ThyssenKrupp, the lift division had a divisional committee within their EWC...

Social commitments and curbing absenteeism

On 18 November 2022, Korian's new SE works council signed a joint declaration with central management with concrete recommendations to strengthen social dialogue and reduce absenteeism. The French nursing home operator has 60,000 employees in seven countries and has recently converted its business into a European Company (SE)...

SE negotiations fail for the first time in France

JCDecaux has been operating as a European Company (SE) since 27 September 2022. The world market leader in outdoor advertising (e.g. bus stops), based in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, has 10,700 employees in over 80 countries, 5,900 of them in Europe. The Special Negotiating Body meetings with central management failed to reach agreement...

Spanish textile group sets global standards

On the 15th anniversary of its International Framework Agreement from 2007, Inditex signed a new protocol with the International Trade Union Confederation (industriALL) on 3 October 2022. Inditex is the world´s largest textile retailer with 144,000 employees and operates brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Pull & Bear...

French Supreme Labour Court upholds warning against EWC member

On 15 June 2022, the Social Chamber of the Court of Cassation in Paris (comparable to a Labour Court) dismissed the appeal of a French EWC member of the major British bank HSBC. French management had issued her with a warning notice for violating the bank's...

EWC training in Swedish bank

A face-to-face meeting of all members of the European Works Council of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) was held on 17 and 18 October 2022, for the first time since the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. At the beginning of the current term of office, many new delegates had joined...

Gender inequality in Germany

The WSI GenderDatenportal is a project from the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) of the trade-union linked Hans Böckler Foundation. It presents extent and determinants of occupational and social inequality between men and women in Germany through graphs, data and analyses. The portal examines the following aspects...