Thematic feature - works councils and other workplace employee representation and participation structures

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This article examines the French situation, as of September 2003, with regard to works councils and similar workplace employee representation and participation structures. It looks at the regulatory framework, statistical data, evidence on practice and the views of the social partners.

The issue of works councils and similar workplace employee representation and participation structures is topical at present, with the EU Member States required to implement the recent Directive (2002/14/EC) establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees in the European Community (EU0204207F) by March 2005 (though countries which currently have no 'general, permanent and statutory' system of information and consultation or employee representation may phase in the Directive's application to smaller firms up until 2008). The Directive applies to undertakings with at least 50 employees or establishments with at least 20 employees (the choice is left to the Member States). It provides employees with the following rights to information and consultation:

• information on the recent and probable development of the undertaking's or the establishment's activities and economic situation;
• information and consultation on the situation, structure and probable development of employment within the undertaking and on any anticipatory measures envisaged, in particular where there is a threat to employment; and
• information and consultation, with a view to reaching an agreement, on decisions likely to lead to substantial changes in work organisation or in contractual relations.

Information and consultation arrangements set out in agreements between management and labour, including at undertaking or establishment level, may differ from those laid down in the Directive.

While the Directive does not stipulate that information and consultation must be provided through any particular channel or structure, it defines such information and consultation as taking place between the employer and the employee representatives provided for by national laws and/or practices. It is these representatives, who in most EU Member States sit on standing 'works council'-type structures (and in many countries already enjoy all or most of the information and consultation rights laid down in the Directive) that are the focus of this article. The existence of workplace employee representation and participation structures, based on law or widespread collective agreements, is seen in some quarters as a distinctive and important feature of the (mainland) European industrial relations model. Indeed, the idea has been raised of using the coverage of such worker involvement arrangements as an indicator of 'quality' in industrial relations (as suggested, for example, by the European Commission’s June 2001 Communication on Employment and social policies: a framework for investing in quality).

In this context, in September 2003, the EIRO national centres in each EU Member State (plus Norway), were asked, in response to a questionnaire, to provide information about the current situation with regard to national (rather than European level) works councils and similar bodies – the regulatory framework, statistical data (or estimates where not available), evidence on practice and the views of the social partners. The French responses are set out below (along with the questions asked).

Regulation

What is the legislative framework in your country concerning works councils and/or other workplace employee representation and participation structures? Please include here: definition; workforce-size threshold for establishment; composition/election; subjects for information, consultation and co-determination; conditions under which information, consultation and co-determination should take place (ie timing, methods, contents, level of representation, type of response by employees, form of interaction etc); meetings; confidentiality; protection of employees’ representatives. If there is no legislation on this issue in your country, please refer to widespread systems of works councils etc based on collective agreements.

French labour law is selective on worker representation. It distinguishes between representation of individual interests and information and consultation on issues of collective interest, both of which are delegated to bodies elected by workers as a whole. It stipulates, on the other hand, that collective bargaining is the preserve of trade unions. The institutional system is thus complex, but in reality, at company level, a small number of individuals tend to occupy the representative positions within the various institutions available. They make up a group of representatives whose members are clearly identified by employees, who pay little attention to the distribution of representation functions between the various institutions. The legislation favours trade union-sponsored candidates in elections to representatives bodies (though in many cases, elected positions are filled by non-union representatives, especially in companies with workforces of under 100).

Three major specialised bodies share representation duties at workplace level.

The institution of workforce delegate s, (délégués du personnel) was created in 1936 and recreated in 1945. These delegates should be elected by all workers in all establishments with over 10 employees and are responsible for presenting individual and collective grievances to management and ensuring the implementation of legislation and agreements.

Works council s (comités d'entreprise) were created by law in 1945 and should be set up in private sector companies with over 50 employees. They are made up of both the head of the company and employee representatives, who are elected by the whole workforce every two years. Works councils receive information from the employer in areas such as the economic and social situation and new technologies. They also respond to formal consultations by the employer in areas such as redundancies and vocational training, and are responsible for managing social and cultural activities, for which they have a budget at their disposal. Works councils are required to hold meetings chaired by the employer at least once a month. In a multi-establishment company or in a group of companies, works councils also form a central works council (comité central d’entreprise) or a group-level works council (comité de groupe), which enjoy similar rights to those of ordinary works councils. The two-yearly elections of employee representatives on works councils - whose number varies according to the size of the company - are based on slates of candidates, presented by trade unions (with representative unions having the sole right to present slates in the first of the two rounds of voting) or non-union groups. The elections are conducted in separate electoral colleges for different categories of staff: the first electoral college in industrial enterprises consists of either blue-collar workers alone, or blue- and white-collar workers together, while in the service sector, it consists of white-collar workers only; the second electoral college consists of white-collar workers in industry and/or professional and managerial staff in the service sector; and the third electoral college is always comprised only of professional and managerial staff. A single electoral college for all categories of staff may be used in small businesses.

Provided specific conditions are met, the institutions of works council and workforce delegates may merge their responsibilities to form a single entity, known as the délégation unique.

A hygiene, safety and working conditions committee (comité d’hygiène, de sécurité et des conditions de travail, CHSCT) - generally translated as workplace health and safety committee and existing in its current form since 1982 - must be set up in enterprises with more than 50 employees. It is composed of the head of the enterprise and employee members appointed by a special body comprising elected workforce representatives. It has special means of access to information, may take certain initiatives and must be consulted before any decision leading to significant changes in working conditions is taken (FR0201101F).

Since 1968, trade union rights have been recognised in companies and trade unions have been entitled to appoint trade union delegates (délégués syndicaux), who have the power to negotiate and sign collective agreements. Agreements require the signature of only one union delegate for them to be valid for all employees, even if the signatory union is a minority one. Since 1982, annual wage bargaining with union delegates has been compulsory at a company and establishment level (and with unions at sector level).

Beyond workplace level, employee representatives elected on union slates have sat on the boards of state-run companies since 1982 - a practice often retained where companies have been denationalised. In private sector companies, works councils may appoint representatives to attend board meetings in a consultative capacity (TN9809201S).

Elected representatives, union delegates and candidates running for representative positions are legally protected from dismissal (though in reality, it appears that they are much more likely to be made redundant than other workers). Representatives receive various facilities, such as paid time off.

The civil service has its own forms of employee representation, while state-owned companies are on the whole in step with private enterprises.

Statistics

Please provide the most recent available statistics (in absence of statistics please provide estimates referring to sources) on the following (referring to other workplace employee representation and participation structures where works councils are not present and to widespread collective agreements on the issue where there is no legislation):

• the total number of employees and undertakings/establishments in your country;
• the total number of undertakings/establishments covered by the works councils legislation in your country and their total employment (data should be as much as possible disaggregated by gender, company size and sector);
• the total number of undertakings/establishments in your country which have established works councils and their total employment (data should be as much as possible disaggregated by gender, company size and sector).

Please provide any other national data indicating the number/diffusion of works councils.

Works council elections, for which long-term statistics have been collected, involve approximately 6 million employees, or one third of the workforce. There are nearly 30,000 works councils, comprising more than 100,000 elected employee representatives. There are no detailed data on the number of workforce delegates or union delegates. What is known however, is that, despite legal requirements, the smaller the workplace the lower the probability of workplace representatives being present. Furthermore, the size of the establishment and the length of time that it has been in existence both have a positive effect on the creation of representative structures.

In late 2001, the Ministry of Employment's Office for Research and Statistics (Direction de l'animation de la recherche, des études et des statistiques du Ministère de l'Emploi, DARES) published the findings of a survey of employee representative bodies and structures, carried out in 1999, used a representative sample of 11,000 workplaces and 900 businesses with at least 10 employees (central and local government and much of the health and social service sectors were excluded) (FR0201111F). The research examined the presence of various representative structures in the workplaces and companies surveyed - workforce delegates, works councils, CHSCTs and trade union delegates. More than half of all workplaces with at least 10 employees, accounting for one in five employees, were not covered by any representative structure. However, collective employee representation was found to be the norm in companies and establishments above the statutory threshold for setting up works councils. Fewer than 7% of workplaces with 50 employees or more had no representative body, while 98% of those with over 250 employees had at least one form of representation.

Practice

If there are any other statistical sources or recent research on the current practice of works councils or other workplace representation/participation bodies, please give details of the results paying attention to the issues covered by Question 1 (Regulation). Please provide as much quantitative data as possible - eg how many meetings and how often, chair, agenda, composition (eg how many representatives of management, if any, workers, proportion of women members, proportion of women as head of works councils etc) and identify factors of success. Please indicate how the works councils (or works council-type bodies) institution has evolved over the years.

The only comprehensive study dealing with works council practices - which also looks at their relationship with other representation bodies - was conducted by the Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), in cooperation with DARES and published in 1998 (Les comités d’entreprise, enquête sur les élus, les activités et les moyens[Works councils. A survey of elected representatives, activities and resources], IRES/DARES, Les éditions de l'atelier, Paris, 1998) (FR9804101F). It focuses on the impact of how long the establishment concerned has been in place on whether the various representative institutions exist or not and whether representative functions are carried out. The study finds no automatic link between the presence of the structures provided for by the law and the quality of industrial relations. These bodies may in fact exist only to meet legislative requirements and may not really have any tangible impact on employment conditions. Where they do not exist, especially in the smallest establishments, this may be for 'sociological' reasons and does not necessarily mean that employers are attempting to get around the legislation.

The IRES/DARES study found that workplaces where representation has been in place for longer are often unionised and in a position to enjoy all the legal provisions available. Where representation is less well established, often in smaller concerns, there is not the necessary experience to take advantage of all the legally-recognised rights available. Rights concerning assessment of company performance, bargaining and challenges to daily management decisions require representatives that are independent of employers. The mere existence of representation bodies is not sufficient to guarantee this.

The management of social and cultural activities subsidised by companies - sport, canteens, holidays etc - is a very important duty among the many responsibilities of works councils. This part of the works council’s work - which amount to the collective management of a supplement to pay - was found by the research to be a major incentive for setting up councils in new companies. This undoubtedly explains why a large number of elected representatives, who do not take on the whole range of works council responsibilities, are not union members.

Another 2001 IRES study examined the position of women in works councils. (Les femmes secrétaires de comité d’entreprise: une parité trompeuse?[Female works council secretaries : Misleading parity?], Adelheid Hege, Christian Dufour and Catherine Nunes, Premières Informations, Premières Synthèses, DARES, n°15.2, avril 2001) (FR0109103F). Looking at works council secretaries - the senior elected representative on the employee side - the research found that women are generally well represented in this position (making up 40% of the total). However, access by women and men to employee representative positions differs, depending on the particular characteristics of the workplace. Women are more likely to be works council secretaries in small, newly-created and non-unionised companies.

As stated above (under 'Regulation'), works council members are elected from union and non-union slates of candidates. The elections are held every two years, with around half of workplaces holding elections in even years and half in odd years. The table below shows the results of the elections held in 1998 and 2000 (the most recent year for which official data are available). It sets out the number of votes received in 1998 and 2000 by the slates presented by the five main trade union confederations - the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT), General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT), General Confederation of Labour-Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail - Force ouvrière, CGT-FO), French Christian Workers’ Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC) and French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff – General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l'encadrement - Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC) - as well as by 'other' unions and non-union slates. See above (under Regulation) for explanations of the various electoral colleges.

Source: DARES, 'Les élections aux comités d'entreprise en 2000', Premières Informations, 2002.12, No. 51.1. Calculations are the author’s own.

Social partners

Please summarise the views of trade unions on works councils etc and their operation, and outline relations between works councils and trade unions.

Please summarise the views of employers’ organisations on works councils etc and their operation.

The role of workplace representation bodies and union delegates is not substantively challenged by the social partners, most of which have always strongly opposed any possibility of a joint-decision making co-determination process on top of works councils' current mainly information and consultation role. However, the social partners do take issue with the complex structure of representation bodies and the resources and tools available to them. Employers sometimes call for a reduction in representation bodies' responsibilities, a cut in the number of hours representatives are freed from their work to carry out their duties, and the creation of a single structure to replace the current specialised bodies. The unions advocate the continued separation between the roles of elected bodies and trade unions. They also call for increased resources for representative institutions. (Christian Dufour, IRES)