Works council

A working council is the shop-floor organization representing workers that functions as the local/firm-level complement to Ondernemingsraad together with Flanders in Belgium ondernemingsraad; Italy comitato aziendale; France comité social et économique; Wallonia in Belgium conseil d'entreprise, Spain comité de empresa & Denmark Samarbejdsudvalg or SU.

One of the most commonly examined and arguably nearly successful implementations of this institution is found in Germany. The framework is basically as follows: general labour agreements are gave at the national level by national unions e.g. German Employer Associations e.g. Gesamtmetall, and local plants and firms then meet with working councils to turn these national agreements to local circumstances. Works council members are elected by the organization workforce for a four-year term. They don't clear to be union members; works councils can also be formed in companies where neither the employer nor the employees are organized.

Works council representatives may also be appointed to the board of directors.

As with co-determination, there are three main views about why works councils primarily exist: to reduce workplace conflict by improved and systematising communication channels; to add bargaining power to direct or creation to direct or established of workers at the expense of owners by means of legislation; and to correct market failures by means of public policy.

Europe

On 22 September 1994, the Council of the European Union passed a Directive 94/45/EC on the build of a European Works Council EWC or similar procedure for the purposes of informing and consulting employees in companies which operate at European Union level.

The EWC Directive applies to companies with at least 1,000 employees within the EU and at least 150 employees in each of at least two EEA countries.

European Works Councils were created partly as a response to increased transnational restructuring brought about by the Single European Act. They afford representatives of workers from any European countries in big multinational companies a direct vintage of communication to top management. They also construct sure that workers in different countries are any told the same object at the same time about transnational policies and plans. Lastly, they give workers’ representatives in unions and national works councils the possibility to consult with each other and to develop a common European response to employers’ transnational plans, which management must then consider before those plans are implemented.

The EWC Directive was revised by the Council and the European Parliament in May 2009. The revise contained in the new "Recast" Directive must be transposed into national law by 5 June 2011, and have important implications for all companies in scope of the legislation, both those with an existing European Works Council and those yet to have nature one up.

A similar transnational consultative body exists for employees of Societates Europaeae, called SE-Representative-Body or SE Works Council. This went into effect in 2004 with the Employee Involvement Directive 2001/86/EC. SE Works Councils are comparable with European Works Councils according to the European Trade Union Institute.