Employment law: A new framework for informing & consulting
employees in the EU community
18 February 2009
During the last plenary of February, MEP Jean-Louis Cottigny's
(French Socialist) report on above topic was voted with a good
majority. In effect, the European Parliament adopted, by 598 votes
to 21 with 32 abstentions, a resolution on the implementation of
Directive 2002/14/EC establishing a general framework for informing
and consulting employees in the European Community.
The objective of this report was twofold:
- to strengthen the process of informing & consulting
employees within the EU and
- to implement and improve the measures transposing Directive
2002/14/EC.
Background: Directive 2002/14/EC is the first EU directive to
establish a general requirement to inform and consult employees
within undertakings, a requirement which forms a major plank of the
European employee representation model. It was adopted in reaction
to the blatant violation by some undertakings of national law on
informing and consulting employees. This infringement of national
law was made even easier by the fact that there was a legal vacuum
in this area in Community law.
In some Member States, this directive is the only legal basis
guaranteeing employees the right to be informed and consulted, and,
as the Commission points out in its communication, its impact in
these countries will be all the greater.
It must be underlined that the right of employees to be informed
and consulted is enshrined in several Community acts, and Member
States are therefore required to transpose this directive
correctly.
The unprecedented crisis that everyone is facing requires to
strengthen the democratic involvement of employees in decisions
affecting the undertaking in which they work. The idea being to
protect workers in view of the risk of restructuring, mergers,
relocation and other similar operations.
Some EU figures: This implementation concerns
- 23 million businesses employing fewer than 250 people in the
EU,
- SMEs representing 99% of companies and employing over 100
million workers.
Want to read the adopted text?
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2009-0061+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN
Want to take a look at
Directive 2002/14/EC?
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