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to exchange experiences and improve their work in their European works councils. Key EWC members from Erste Bank, UniCredit, If and KBC discussed how their EWCs can tackle the Finance sector’s current challenges such as job losses, restructuring, outsourcing and sales pressure. A best practice example from the French Insurance company Groupama who’s EWC recently concluded a new EWC agreement as well as an agreement on anti-discrimination and diversity, valid for the entire Groupama group, served as a basis to

explore the possibilities and impacts of transnational company agreements.

There were also Austrian and Polish trade union representatives from Austrian based Raiffeisen Bank who have not yet established an EWC.

Participants discussed strategies how to use the improved rights of the EWC Directive 2009/38/EC to better tackle the multiple challenges in the frame of the ongoing crisis. On the basis of the best practice example of the UniCredit trade union alliance, participants discussed the important role of international trade union work and the European trade union federations to facilitate communication of trade unionists across borders and thus strengthen the power of European works council.

This workshop was financially supported by the European Commission and was organised by UNI Europa Finance in close cooperation with the Austrian white collar union GPA-djp.

It is the first of four sectoral workshops in the frame of UNI Europa’s project “European Works Councils: "Tools for transnational trade union action in the services and communication sectors". UNI Europa’s commerce, property services as well as the Graphical and Packaging sectors will hold similar workshops in the coming weeks.

The conclusions of the discussion and the best practices identified will be presented at a final conference on 6-7 November 2013 in Granada.