Activities

The EWPCC continues in its efforts to organise small-scale, interactive seminars, enabling a lively exchange between SE board-level employee representatives. Following a first experience focusing on the issue of confidentiality in March 2011, a second training session was organised from 7 to 9 March 2012. Board members from 10 different European Companies and 4 different EU Member States came to the training centre of Unite the Union in Esher, near London, to improve their understanding of the financial data they receive and the logic of the business economics that underlies this data.

The scenarios Worker Particiption 2030 undertake an adventurous exercise: casting a long look forward into the future, namely the year 2030. The aim of this European scenario workshop was to reflect and exchange on different environments in which worker participation might have to operate in the future. During the workshop, participants explored the four alternative futures of Worker Participation 2030, jointly reflected on their implications and exchange views on strategies and priorities for today.

After Vienna in 2009 and Amsterdam in 2010, Warsaw was chosen as a location for the third annual conference for SE workers’ representatives, experts and trade union coordinators. During the second half of 2011, Poland held the chair of the European Council, confirming that they can no longer be considered a ‘new’ Member State, but rather as a fully integrated partner of the European Union. More than 60 participants attended the conference, which was organised in cooperation with the Hans Böckler Foundation, the Polish office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Polish trade union confederations Solidarność and OPZZ.

Succeeding previous initiatives, the EWPCC and the ETUI Education department organised a third workshop for experts and trainers of board-level employee representatives in Hamburg (26–28 October 2011). After discussions about the general need for training and cross-cultural aspects, the seminar focused on training tools for sustainable development and the analysis of financial data.

On 30 and 31 March 2011, a first interactive training was organised for SE board-level employee representatives. The purpose of this two-day seminar was to help worker representatives to deal with everyday problems related to information declared to be confidential. It was organised in a communicative and interactive style, allowing a lively exchange between the participants. Representatives from nine different companies and five different countries exchanged ideas and experiences, were informed about the regulations concerning the subject of confidentiality and discussed the relevant issues with trade union experts and practitioners.

This was a two day conference organised in Amsterdam by the European Workers Participation Competence Center (EWPCC) together with Stichting À Propos (NL) and the FNV (Dutch trade union federation). The purpose of the conference was to have a debate among worker representatives in European Companies (SEs) and other multinational companies about how to make use of employee participation rights in decision making at strategic company level and how to push companies in a more socially responsible and sustainable direction. The financial crisis and the associated failure of theories on market discipline and shareholder capitalism create new challenges for strengthening the influence of employees and other stakeholders over multinational companies in transition.

Venue: ACV-CSC Brussels – Rue de Trèves/Trierstraat 33 (Room 9) – 1040 Brussels

The European Worker Participation Competence Centre (EWPCC) of the ETUI has begun a series of seminars designed to examine, in particular, the qualification requirements of board members representing the workforce of European (SE) and other Transnational Companies. On 2 and 3.6.2010 twenty board members serving as "non-executive directors" in 13 companies came to Brussels to receive information about recent developments in European Company Law and European Corporate Governance by the EU Commission and the European Parliament, as well as by European academic experts. Earlier seminars concerned important practical topics like information policy of worker representatives or subjects suitable for taking own initiatives, such as the "Sustainable company" against the background of climate change.



Venue: Helsingör, LO-skolen (Denmark)

The Education Department of the European Trade Union Institute and the European Worker Participation Competence Centre organised a workshop on ‘A European dimension to the training of employee board-level representatives’ from 17 to 19 March 2010 at LO-skolen, Helsingør, Denmark. The workshop gathered employee board-level representatives in SEs and MNCs, as well as representatives from training institutes connected to trade unions.

Venue: Jørlunde close to Copenhagen, conference centre of Dansk Metal

On the occasion of the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, ETUI’s European Worker Participation Competence Centre (EWPCC) together with the Hans Böckler Foundation (Germany) organised a seminar at the Metalskolen (Danish Metalworkers’ Training Centre), Jorlunde. This seminar was addressed to workers’ representatives in the boardrooms of transnational companies in Europe. Participants from eight companies and six countries learned about the concept of the ‘sustainable company’ and discussed how worker participation can use and foster the concept in company boardrooms.

Venue: Vienna, Chamber of Labour

Second exchange of experience between workers’ representatives in SE boardrooms
Organised jointly by the Vienna Chamber of Labour, the Hans Böckler Foundation and the ETUI

Venue: Runö Kursgard, Akersberga/Sweden

Identifying the profile and the specific training and support needs of employee board-level representatives in MNCs and SEs was one of the objectives of a workshop organised by ETUI at the Runö Centre in Sweden. Representatives from national trade unions, trade union training centres and trade union-related foundations and institutes exchanged information about their practices and debated how resources, methods and materials could be made available and what kind of cooperation could be established within the framework of the EWPCC.