On 24-26 February, the 2016 annual Conference of the European Workers’ Participation Competence Centre (ETUI) will open a forum for employee representatives from across Europe to discuss workers' participation issues in its transnational dimension.

The EWPCC Conference series is primarily aimed at the EWPCC's main stakeholders, i.e. workers' representatives. It is designed to foster a better understand the interlinkages between different forms of workers’ participation, as well as to develop a shared understanding of the different ways in which it might take place across different levels of companies within different national and European settings.

The 2014 EWPCC Conference focussed on developing a comparative understanding of the role of board-level employee representation across Europe.

The EWPCC Conference held in February 2015 explored the wide variety of ways in which local information and consultation takes place at the national/ local level (vertical articulation).

As the culmination of this series, the upcoming February 2016 EWPCC Conference will attempt to build bridges between different forms of participation (horizontal articulation), so as to enable an understanding of the possibilities and limits to the articulation, or linking up, of employee interest representation across all levels of the company.

In plenary sessions and focussed working groups, we will draw on examples drawn from practice and insights gained from research in order to explore interactively the following themes:

  • How and why are processes of information and consultation articulated from the local to the national to the transnational level. What works, what doesn’t?

  • What possibilities are there to link these forms of workers’ participation with employee representation on company boards? What are the risks and opportunities therein?

  • What is the role of trade unions and their European federations in facilitating these processes?

  • How can this be brought to match the parallel processes of hierarchical decision-making within companies?

See the attached agenda for more details.

EWPCC_Conf_2016_agenda