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25 years of EWC directive, 25 years of EWC Service

Recently, the British Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) published two interesting court decisions that are favourable for European Works Councils.  The first court decision was published on December 11,  2019 and dealt with the complaint of the Vesuvius EWC. The second one was nine days later, and dealt with a complaint of the Verizon EWC. We distracted 6 important lessons from these from these two cases:

1. The EWC is entitled to financial information. In case of a restructuring this includes the financial costs of the restructuring. Without this information the EWC will not have the “full picture of the commercial rationale”. This also includes the overall redundancy costs as an element of the restructuring costs. Asking for the overall redundancy costs does not imply that the EWC duplicates the role of the local negotiators.
2. The employer has e to provide EWCs with requested financials, even if certain financial data are not (directly) available.
3. There is no minimal threshold which applies to transnational matters falling within the scope of the EWC, unless specifically negotiated and agreed in the relevant EWC agreement. Anyway, without disclosing the financial data the EWC ‘would not be in a position to understand whether or not, the likely overall costs were indeed small in relative terms as the company might contend’. Hence, according to the CAC, the EWC must be able to check the financials and does not have to take every statement from the company for granted.
4. Nor is the excuse valid that ‘certain information is not even given to the board of directors’. It is not a legitimate argument that the EWC should not be provided with more information than that is provided to the board, if this information is within the remit of the EWCs right to information.
5. If  an  EWC claims it is not sufficiently informed, it must be able to point out specifically what kind of information is lacking. On the other side, as can also be learned from point 1, the EWC’s right to Information & Consultation is not limited to the impact on employees only. The EWC must be able to understand a decision and the rationale for that decision. Whether the information provided by an Employer is sufficient in any given context, can best be established by both parties in mutual agreement. There is no “bright line” test to determine whether the information provided by an Employer is sufficient in any given context.
6. Likewise, no party can unilaterally declare the information and consultation processes to be closed. Neither is it up to the Employer unilaterally to label a document an “opinion statement”. Whether a document is an “opinion statement” is a matter for the EWC to decide.

For a more extended analysis of these two CAC decisions, please see British Central Arbitration Committee confirms basic EWC rights

Sjef Stoop, EWC trainer and advisor

25 years of EWC in 25 blogs