Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats
| Victory for workers’ rights | Victory for workers’ rights |
Europe ’s Social Democrats, despite fierce Conservative opposition, yesterday chalked up a major victory on the ‘European Works Council’ Directive. As a result, the rights of workers in Europe have been considerably strengthened. After a week of negotiations between the French EU Presidency and the European Parliament, Social Democrats won the day on three central points and even managed to exceed trade union demands.
Firstly, worker consultation and information in the event of plans for restructuring will become compulsory. The case of Renault in Vilvoorde ( Belgium) in 1997 provides a vivid illustration of the problem. The French car maker closed its Vilvoorde assembly plant then without informing or consulting the European works council. This decision triggered storms of protest at the time. In the aftermath the appeal court in Versailles ruled that this course of action had been unlawful, because the works council had to be notified in good time so that there was still time in which to scrutinise, oppose and criticise the company’s plans.
The aim of 1994’s ‘European Works Council’ Directive was to create the possibility of worker representation in companies operating across European borders. The reason for this is because workers’ rights of participation vary considerably in the individual EU states. For that reason the Directive forces companies with 1 000 or more workers and at least 150 in a minimum of two countries of the European Economic Area to establish a works council comprising workers’ representatives from all the relevant countries. Since 2004 trade unions have been demanding a revision of the text: 12 years after its introduction, only a third of the companies concerned had actually established a European works council. In particular, large companies with over 5 000 employees were lagging behind in terms of implementation. This experience shows why the Social Democrats’ second triumph is so important: the introduction of effective, deterrent and proportionate penalties for instances where companies flout the Directive.
The third victory concerns the abolition of the ’50-employee’ threshold. Hitherto only companies with over 50 employees were obliged to establish a European works council. From now on this will be compulsory for all trans-European firms, regardless of size. At last, this will put a stop to the unequal treatment of small member countries and employees in small firms.
With the adoption of the new Directive on European works councils, our political group has made a decisive contribution to reinforcing the social Europe. European works councils allow networks of workers to be built up at European level. This will make it more difficult in future for company bosses to play off workers from different countries against one another, to the detriment of both sides. Sadly there are many examples of this game of ‘location poker’, such as the closure of the Nokia plant in Bochum where 2 300 people lost their jobs. Europeans need a social Europe which offers them protection. Yesterday we took a giant stride towards the strong transnational representation of workers’ interests in Europe.
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