The Establishment of European Works Councils

Setting out to examine the operation of European Works Councils in the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Germany, this book concentrates on eight large undertakings in the metalworking and chemical industries, in each case looking at a parent company and a foreign subsidiary. The emergence of the ECW is the most significant intervention by the EU in the industrial relations field. Few studies have looked at the operation of ECWs, partly because of the sheer novelty of the institution and the expense of conducting in-depth empirical research. In the first stage of this work, formal and quantitative data was obtained on ECWs via questionnaires and secondary data on the companies themselves. The second stage consisted of interviews with EWE representatives, management representatives, national trade union and employers association reps and the corresponding European trade union federations. These included interviews with representatives of the European Trade Union Confederation, the European Commission and the European Parliament.