News

During the last week-end EURO-MEI held a seminar on commercial broadcasting in the EU. Over Thirty participants gathered in Berlin to discuss the state and challenges for representation and participation of workers in commercial broadcasting and TV production. Union officials as well as workers from national and multinational broadcasters participated in the seminar, which was co-financed by the European Commission.



Colleagues from ProsiebenSat1, Mediaset, RTL, Planeta, Vivendi exchanged on the prospects of European Works Council in their companies. Whereas councils exist already at Mediset, RTL and Vivendi, EURO-MEI affiliates have recently started to work towards the setting-up of works councils at ProSiebenSat1 and Planeta. Workers and unionists from those companies came together in working groups to exchange on the current state in the groups’ companies and discussed future steps to work towards and EWC. Both media groups have undergone profound restructuring and the workforce is faced with job cuts and of deterioration of working conditions.



Participants also discussed how to improve the cooperation of workers and their unions in commercial broadcasting and TV production through EURO-MEI. In the conclusions participants called for EURO-MEI to step-up its efforts to liaise with existing European Works Councils to reinforce the workers rights on information and consultation and to increase union rights; to extend cooperation beyond Europe in companies with global reach; to continue and increase cooperation with other sectors within UNI and sister federations in multinationals to build new EWC’ s.