An exhaustive survey of works councils in France carried out by the IRES research institute and the Ministry for Employment, and published in early 1998, highlights the discrepancies that exist between the uniform legislation in this area and its varying implementation. Great variations arise, depending on when the works council was first set up in a particular company and on whether or not the elected employee representatives are affiliated to a trade union.
Works council s or comités d'entreprisewere created by law in 1945 and provide one of the channels of worker representation in private sector companies with over 50 employees (currently around 6 million workers are employed in such companies). They are made up of both the head of the company and employee representatives, who are elected every two years. Works councils receive information from the employer in areas such as the economic and social situation and new technologies. They also respond to formal consultations by the employer in areas such as redundancies and vocational training, and are responsible for managing social and cultural activities, for which they have a budget at their disposal. There are around 30,000 works councils comprising more than 100,000 elected employee representatives, not counting elected substitutes. A great number of these representatives were affiliated to unions when works councils were first set up, but the councils have since undergone relative de-unionisation.
Works councils are not the only worker-representation bodies present in French companies. Workforce delegate s (délégués du personnel) are also elected by all workers in companies with more than 10 employees (at least in theory) and ensure that laws, regulations and sector-level collective agreements are actually implemented at the workplace. In addition, trade unions can appoint trade union delegate/"shop steward" (délégués syndicaux) who have almost total legal monopoly over company-level collective bargaining. The three institutions often coexist in companies (with their members frequently holding several mandates concurrently), but works councils are playing an ever-increasing role. Some of the areas under their control - economic information and employment - have gained importance during the period of economic slump and the number of works councils is gradually growing. Their legal structures have served as models for pioneering French companies in the creation of European Works Councils, or comités d'entreprise européens.
The research institute, the Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), in cooperation with the research arm of the Ministry for Employment (Direction de l'animation de la recherche et des études statistiques, DARES) has just completed the first thorough representative survey of these three forms of worker representation on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of their creation - "Comités d'entreprise. Enquête sur les élus, les activités et les moyens" ("Works councils. A survey of elected representatives, activities and resources"), IRES/DARES, Les éditions de l'atelier, Paris (1998). This study was conducted by directly interviewing a representative sample of 2,500 works council secretaries.
The survey emphasises the disparity between the rights common to all works councils and the differences that exist in the ways they are operating. Depending on types of workers, economic activity, geographical area, length of existence, working hours etc, every works council has a unique identity. This diversity reflects the social and economic variety, both within and outside companies. Not all works councils possess the same resources, and disparities in material resources are often accompanied by inequalities in human ones.
Two key factors for classifying works councils
Date of establishment
Social and cultural activities such as canteens, cultural and tourist activities as well as other types of entertainment are subsidised by companies, although no legal minima exist. The study established a relatively strict financial hierarchy between those works councils set up in the decades immediately following the Second World War and those that were created at a later date. The former have benefited from more favourable conditions for development and took advantage of the period of economic growth to reinforce their position. They often have almost 2% of the total paybill budget at their disposal for activities such as those mentioned above. The second wave of works councils, which have come into existence since the beginning of the 1970s, have not benefited from the same economic circumstances. Some of them owe their existence to the economic slump itself and have experienced long-term restrictive social conditions which have prevented them from expanding their activities. The budget at their disposal is more often nearer 0.5% of total paybill.
The most recent works councils are established in smaller work units and are less frequently linked to larger economic units (groups of companies, etc). The sociological characteristics of their elected employee representatives are not the same as those of older works councils, which are influenced by the industrial tradition and whose members are slightly older and mainly men. The members of the newer works council are often not affiliated to a tarde union. While only one out of every two elected representatives is unionised, nearly two-thirds of workers are represented by a works council whose members are unionised.
Unionised and non-unionised works councils
How do works councils exercise their rights? The study analyses this in two parts. Firstly, it was established that, no matter whether the elected representatives were unionised or not, rights were generally well respected. However, there was a very limited efficiency of response to decisions made by employers. Non-unionised works councils appeared more pessimistic than unionised ones. The study then established a hierarchy in the ability of elected representatives to use the rights and resources at their disposal. Union-affiliated works councils were much more able to make use of all the possibilities of intervention at their disposal, whether intervention towards the employer, particularly concerning economic issues, or in matters concerning social and cultural activities. Non-unionised works councils appeared more fragile, more dependent on the employer and less confident towards the workers themselves.
Works councils as parts of a network
Analysis of relations between elected employee representatives on works councils and the other representation bodies within the company demonstrates that these elected representatives are all the more able to carry out their responsibilities for being better integrated into a complex representation system. Information gleaned in the works council is used elsewhere.
Negotiations are part of a more or less formalised "game" of repeated meetings between workers' representatives and employers. The more that companies with works councils are unionised, the better able the elected representatives are to firstly, create a representation system - workforce delegates, health and safety committees, local union branches etc - and then to make full use of it. When the full range of representative organisations exists, the unions act to organise and regulate them all. Under these conditions, the possibility of holding several representative positions concurrently plays an important role.
Commentary
The study leads us to group works councils into two categories. Firstly, there are the older, more unionised councils with better financial resources. They are better able to take advantage of the wide range of possibilities for representation that exist within a company and even to take advantage of opportunities to participate directly. Within this first category the very confident status of works councils operating in the "public sector" (nationalised or semi-public companies) stands out. The second category is that of the newer, non-unionised works councils which have fewer financial resources and are less confident in using the powers allotted to them. Their members are often younger and include more women than the works councils in the first category.
The election of representatives by all workers highlights the difference in quality of representation associated with the fact of whether elected representatives are members of a trade union or not. Low union affiliation might thus be a threat to the very functioning of the representative bodies elected by the workers. (Christian Dufour, IRES)