The idea behind the establishment of European Works Councils (EWCs) is that these are bodies which should be informed and consulted on company decisions and actions. However, this flow of information is often disrupted by confidentiality constraints imposed by management. Three central research... Find out more

On 31 January 2020, at 23:00, the United Kingdom (UK) officially ceased to be a member of the European Union (EU). One of the many areas that will likely be directly affected with regard to workers’ rights is the organisation and functioning of European Works Councils (EWCs). EWCs are company-level... Find out more

Are foreign multinational companies more or less likely than domestically-owned firms to recognise trade unions and engage seriously in collective bargaining? On the face of it, a multinational company is in a stronger position relative to employees as it can play off one group against another. On... Find out more

For many years, in most European countries, the public sector has been under pressure to reduce expenditure and increase efficiency. Long-term pressures on the public sector, and especially the recent austerity drives following from the crisis, have led to reforms and cuts in public budgets with... Find out more

The European Commission published a consultation document with a view to take legislative action to establish fair minimum wages in Europe. In this policy brief, the researchers argue for a pragmatic approach of taking the ‘in-work-poverty-wage’ threshold of 60 per cent of the national full-time... Find out more

Whatever lip-service may be paid to sustainable consuming, by far most European consumers still do their weekly shop in the big supermarket chains. A handful of groups have carved up this lucrative market and grown so powerful as to be able to drive producers’ selling prices steadily down. This is... Find out more

Transnational collective bargaining (TCB) has become a ‘hot’ topic of European industrial relations. As well as collective bargaining between workers and employers conducted at the sectoral or national level, negotiations on employee rights and working conditions now also take place at the... Find out more

This report on the trade union landscape in Poland forms part of a wide-ranging project, initiated and coordinated by the ETUI, which aims to map changes in unionisation and the varying organisational structures of unions in the ‘new member states’ of the European Union. The current report on the... Find out more

This Working Paper maps the labour law reforms in various European countries either triggered by the crisis or introduced using the crisis – falsely – as an excuse. Such reforms generally render existing labour law provisions more flexible and loosen minimum standards, shifting the emphasis to soft... Find out more

Since 2001, the ETUC and ETUI have produced Benchmarking Working Europe for the European Social Summit to draw attention to the state of working Europe. This publication aims to provide a genuine benchmarking exercise applied to the world of labour and social affairs grounded in effective labour and... Find out more