Works councils and their elections are comprehensively protected by law – but trade unionists criticize the fact that employers repeatedly try to prevent new ones from being founded.
In Germany, employees can actually form a works council in all companies with more than five employees. This is regulated by the Works Constitution Act.
However, the trade union-affiliated Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) estimates that around one in five such works councils may have been hindered by companies. This is particularly often the case in medium-sized companies with 50 to 100 employees under the management of the owner.
Dozens of trade unionists interviewed
The WSI emphasizes that these results are not representative. However, the study offers an approximation of the otherwise difficult to measure phenomenon.
The WSI researchers interviewed experts from the Industrial Union of Mining, Chemicals and Energy (IGBCE), IG Metall and the Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG) in 131 local branches. The question was about their experiences with conducting works council elections.
Disturbance of Works council elections is punishable
Elections can be disrupted by, for example, the dismissal of candidates, the use of law firms or by supporting candidates close to the employer. If companies try to disrupt or even prevent a works council election or the work of the committee, this is also known as “union busting”. Such attempts are punishable.
If a works council already exists, there are rarely any obstructions to the elections by the employers, according to the analysis. In more than 8,000 works council elections during the period under review, disruptions were reported to the unions in just 1.7 percent of cases, according to the report.
Little hindrance to existing works councils
The situation is different for newly founded companies, where union representatives are aware of disruptions in 21.2 percent of cases. This has clear consequences, especially for newly founded companies, write the authors Martin Behrens and Heiner Dribbusch. In almost half of these cases (45 percent), no works council elections were held afterwards.
“Once a works council is established, most companies soon come to terms with its existence and rarely see any reason to fundamentally question its work,” write the researchers. The legally guaranteed right to elect a works council often has to be fought for in the face of strong resistance.
Employers: Very few procedures
The Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) referred to tagesschau.de-Request that the public prosecutor’s offices only received a few cases of obstruction of works council work.
“The claim is more reminiscent of the Loch Ness monster: many claim to have seen it, but no one has discovered it yet,” the employers said in a statement. The number of cases in which charges are brought is in the single digits.