News

Improving the efficiency of European Works Councils (EWC), forging global trade union alliances in multinationals and targeting global framework agreements (GFA) with IT multinationals was the focus of a three days seminar organised by UNI Europa IBITS in Sesimbra, Portugal.

Some 40 representatives of EWC of key IT companies including Atos Origin, CapGemini, CSC, EDS, Getronics, HP, IBM, Tieto Corporation, and Unisys came together to analyse strengths and weaknesses of their EWC work and to find ways to improve efficiency and networking among each others. Also there were colleagues of TDF who had just requested the set up of a EWC for their company. In addition, trade union officers, responsible for the IT sector in their countries, also attended the seminar in order to reinforce their roles of EWC coordinators, building the link between UNI Europa and the EWCs.

Timely information and meaningful consultation is still a major problem in most of the companies. What makes things worse is that management often declares information as confidential, what means it can not be used for reporting back to the respective constituencies of the EWC members. The revised EWC Directive will be certainly helpful in this respect as it defines information and consultation in a more precise manner. Though the new legislation will enter into effect before May 2011.

Another common concern was the use of experts to advise EWCs. For various reasons the companies reject trade unionists as experts, but often other independent experts as well. This makes the EWC work more difficult, as often opinions have to be built on subjects of high complexity. It was recommended though, that the advice of trade union experts should be sought more often, even though it was for the preparatory meetings only.

Participants made a number of proposals for UNI Europa IBITS to advance its services for EWC members, i.e. assist to select the right experts, support networking among EWCs in the sector, organise more platforms for exchange and learning, develop more coordination activities, step up lobbying EU institution together with other stakeholders.

One participant questioned the role of EWCs in global companies, and in particular in companies with headquarters in the USA. There was consensus that the solution would be to extend the scope of EWCs into Global Framework Agreements (GFA). Global company networks, including the EWC and Global Trade Union Alliances (GTUA) would be instrumental to achieve a GFA, which was seen as the only binding contractual relation within multinationals and thus going far beyond unilateral codes of conduct, CSR policies and even the UN Global Compact.

Today, there are some 80 GFA in place signed between multinational corporations (MNC) and Global Union Federations (GUF). UNI global union has signed 21 so far and is aiming at 50 by 2010. UNI has signed agreements for example with France Telecom, Telefonica, Greek Telecom and Portugal Telecom. To date, yet, there is no such agreement with a multinational IT company. Participants agreed that strategies for GFA will figure high on the EWC agendas in the future.

More information about the seminar in Sesimbra, including all the presentations, conclusions and photographs are available in the members only section.