A works council is a shop-floor organization representing workers that functions as a local/firm-level complement to trade unions but is independent of these at least in some countries.
Works councils exist with different names in a variety of related forms in a number of European countries, including Great Britain (joint consultative committee or employees’ council); Germany and Austria (Betriebsrat);[1][2] Luxembourg (comité mixte, délégation du personnel); the Netherlands (Dienstcommissie, Ondernemingsraad) and Flanders in Belgium (ondernemingsraad); Italy (comitato aziendale); France (comité social et économique); Wallonia in Belgium (conseil d'entreprise), Spain (comité de empresa) and Denmark (Samarbejdsudvalg or SU).
They give representatives of workers from all European countries in big multinational companies a direct line of communication to top management.
The changes 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 set one up.
A similar transnational consultative body exists for employees of Societates Europaeae, called SE-Representative-Body or SE Works Council.
The main role of the CE or the CSE is being the interface between the employees and the members of the board which is constituted of the chairman and the HR director, mostly for collective issues, such as work organisation, training policy, benefits.
The second is called participation, and means that works councils must be consulted about specific issues and have the right to make proposals to management.
[17] One of the most impressive achievements of the councils is producing harmonious relations between management and workers, leading to a situation with strong unions and a low strike rate.
The current structure and mandate of works councils can be traced to the soviet movement that swept through Europe in the early twentieth century.
Demands for a soviet-led German republic were eventually neutralized by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), with the Works Constitution Act (Betriebsrätegesetz) of 1920 emerging as a concession to the movement.
In the Weimar Republic, the ADGB unions discussed expanding the powers of the works councils to include production control in the name of economic democracy, thus initiating socialist transformation.
The rise of fascism brought a “revised, anti-Marxist version of socialism.”[26] The Nazis launched ambitious “corporatist” policies that “rejected class struggle and replaced it with the idea of cooperation between employers and workers.”[27] Works councils were banned by the 1934 Work Order Act and replaced by so-called councils of confidence (Vertrauensräte).