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.

The Vienna Chamber of Labour, the Hans Böckler Foundation and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) organized a two-day seminar attended by academics, experts, legal advisers, researchers of the SEEurope network, practitioners and trade union press representatives from all over Europe.

The main purpose of the conference was to enhance and encourage the exchange of experiences and views among worker and trade union delegates, in particular those sitting in supervisory boards or works councils of “old” and more recently established SEs. Company delegates have underlined some characteristics and also difficulties connected to the functioning of the SE they work for. One of the most important issues raised concerned the necessity to enhance the culture of worker participation in a specific form, which is closer to the industrial relation schemes of certain countries but not so close to the participation structures of other EU member states. In this sense, once again the transnational dimension in which EU companies mostly operate nowadays poses challenges to European workers, called at developing participative mentality and culture more and more. Responding to this integration challenge means to realize that SEs propose a set of possibilities to be known and explained not only to trade union and worker representatives but to the whole company workforce.

Reiner Hoffmann underlined that, especially in time of crisis, it is really urgent to coordinate different worker involvement contexts and promote collaboration, as a step forward in the Europeanization process of the workers.

Source: PARL Newsletter (2009), October, Issue 3. Brussels.