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Employee representation

Employee representation may be defined as the right of employees to seek a union or individual to represent them for the purpose of negotiating with management on such issues as wages, hours, benefits and working conditions. In the workplace, workers may be represented by trade union and through works councils – or similar structures elected by all employees. EU law has established rights and obligations for employees and their representatives to be informed and consulted via a set of directives that provide for the information and consultation of the workers, at both national and international level.

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Ricardo Rodriguez Contreras is a research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound and focuses on comparative industrial relations, social dialogue and collective bargaining...

Research manager,
Working life research unit
Publications results (74)

Strabag is a multinational building and construction company. It operates in three areas: building construction and civil engineering; road construction; and tunnelling and services, in more than 500 locations worldwide. In 2009, Strabag SE had 75,500 employees, of which more than 80% worked in

20 October 2011

Fresenius was one of the first German companies with a two-tier corporate governance structure to become a European company in July 2007. The actors involved in the negotiation process worked under the impression to accomplish pioneer work. Both the management and the employee side representatives

20 October 2011

The Hager Group is a family-run company based in the German Saarland with approximately 10,000 employees worldwide. The company offers a complete range of systems, solutions and services for energy distribution in buildings, including security solutions as well as electrical installations supplies

20 October 2011

Elcoteq is a global contract manufacturer of electronic equipment headquartered in Luxembourg. While the origins of the company are in Finland where Elcoteq was founded in 1984, the established production sites in European as well as non-European countries. Until 2008 the European centre of the

20 October 2011

This study examined best practice examples of social partner involvement in greening the economy in different Member States. It analysed the role of the trade unions and employers’ associations as well as employees, their direct representatives and company management in selected projects at national

28 June 2011

En la primavera de 2009, Eurofound realizó una encuesta representativa de gran envergadura dirigida a los empresarios y representantes de los trabajadores. La Encuesta Europea de Empresas 2009 – Prácticas de flexibilidad y diálogo social (ECS) es la segunda encuesta realizada en centros de trabajo a

30 May 2011

The European Company Survey 2009 on flexibility practices and social dialogue is the second European-wide establishment survey to be undertaken by Eurofound. The survey documents flexibility strategies in firms and is a unique source of comparative information on social dialogue at the workplace

30 May 2011

GfK, the German-based market research company, transformed itself into an SE in 2009. Management saw the change as reflecting GfK’s international perspectives and structure, although it also had the side effect of avoiding a major change in the composition of the supervisory board. The

23 May 2011

The reinsurance group SCOR was the first French listed company to create a European Company (SE) with employee participation. Three parallel agreements secure employee involvement through a common SE works council for the SCOR SE and its two subsidiaries. This was an important progress, since with

25 April 2011

Online resources results (298)

Unions seek better employee representation in very small enterprises

On 20 January 2010, the Craftwork Employers’ Association (Union professionnelle artisanale, UPA [1]) and four trade union confederations signed a joint letter (in French, 40Kb PDF) [2] addressed to the country’s Prime Minister, François Fillon, and the Minister of Labour, Xavier Darcos. The letter

Private childcare workers demand better pay and working conditions

In Austria, most kindergarten and professional childcare facilities for children up to the age of six years are run by the authorities, mainly at provincial (/Land/) or local state level. The employees of these public care institutions are all covered by clear-cut employment regulations, which are

Small trade unions oppose change in union law

On 2 December 2009, following an invitation from the Pancyprian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (Παγκύπρια Ομοσπονδία Ανεξάρτητων Συντεχνιών, POAS), a number of independent trade unions attended a meeting with the aim of examining the draft bill introduced to the House of Representatives in

Industrial relations in the EU Member States and candidate countries

European Union enlargement is approaching fast, with up to 12 countries from central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean likely to join the EU from 2004 onwards. In this context, the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) has started to expand its coverage of industrial relations

2002 works council elections start

Between 1 March and 31 May 2002, works council election [1] s are taking place in German establishments under the terms of new Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz, BetrVG) passed in 2001 (DE0107234F [2]). The BetrVG, which had previously remained almost unchanged for 30 years

Company law changes have implications for employee representatives

A number of legislative proposals issued in 2001 and 2002 aim to strengthen the position of the general meeting of shareholders in Dutch companies in relation to company management and, in some cases, even the supervisory board. At the same time, the powers of employee representatives will remain

Problems emerge as works councils' role expands

In broad terms, works councils have become a generally accepted phenomenon in the Netherlands, and their role has expanded considerably over the years. At the same time, however, mounting problems have arisen, relating to issues such as a lack of interest in works councils among employees and the

Research examines employee representation

Late 2001 saw the publication by the Ministry of Employment of two studies of employee representation in French firms, based on widely-differing statistical sources. The Ministry published both the results of the 1999 works council elections and the findings of a survey of the existence of various

Union density and labour market participation among immigrant workers examined

Recent figures from the Statistics Norway (Statistisk Sentralbyrå, SSB) show that labour market participation among 'non-western' immigrants (ie those from outside Europe and North America) in Norway is still low, and there are indications to suggest that this is very much due to a general

Decentralisation of working time regulation to enterprise level assessed

One of the goals of the Dutch Working Time Act of 1996 was to transfer decision-making on working time to the enterprise or even plant level. A survey evaluating the effects of the Act, carried out in 2000 and published in 2001, finds that the ability of employee representatives to counter


Blogs results (1)
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Trade unions in many EU Member States face the issue of declining membership. This is a fundamental challenge for organised labour, but it is premature to speak about the redundancy unions: when it comes to important decisions affecting the workplace, restructuring being one, trade unions remain a

20 Noviembre 2019
Data results (1)
24 Octubre 2023
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