As reported earlier this week the European Commission has submitted a proposal with changes to the Directive for EWCs. This proposal is a response to the proposal submitted by the European Parliament (EP) a year ago. In a series of blogs the EOR Service team will discuss the main changes.
Online meetings
Let’s start with a tricky topic. Can management force the EWC to meet online? At the time the first directive was drawn up, this was not yet an issue. That’s why this point has always been a bit up in the air. The committee proposal brings (some) changes to this. According to this proposal the EWC agreement must now explicitly determine the meeting format. The explanatory memorandum states that the social partners may consider meeting online. It is therefore not automatically the case that every meeting can take place online. The old directive did state that the EWC agreement had to determine the meeting location, but not the meeting format. Furthermore, the old version only referred to ‘meetings’ without further provision (except in a later addition on the participation of seafarers in the EWC). As a result nowadays many EWCs are at odds with their management about the meeting format, because management wants to save costs by planning more and more online.
Facilities
The proposal also contains improvements for the facilities to which the EWC is entitled. For EWCs that are not established under Dutch law, the additional provision that the EWC is entitled to legal support and that the company must pay for this, is very important. The same goes for the costs of legal proceedings. This must also be detailed in the EWC agreement. The Commission proposal clearly states that these provisions should also be included in existing EWC agreements. This means that, once the new Directive comes into effect, existing EWCs will have to sit down with management to adjust their agreement. The great thing about this is that these ‘renegotiations’ will take place with these new provisions as a foundation.
Number of meetings
A very important change has been made to the Annex of the Directive prescribing the EWC model to be applied in the event that an EWC agreement cannot be concluded. The new proposal now requires two meetings per year, instead of one meeting per year. Since this model is a major guideline for negotiations and renegotiations, it is a great help for all EWCs.
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Other changes
Other important changes include the handling of confidential information, tighter definitions for information and consultation and a clearer definition of what constitutes transnational matters. We will discuss this in more detail in the coming weeks.
Not included in the proposal
Unfortunately, a number of elements of the EP proposal have disappeared in the Commission proposal. The directive gives the EWC the right to issue an opinion if a company wants to take a drastic decision. To ensure that this opinion can be meaningful the old text stated that EWC must be able to issue their opinion at a time when the company can still take this into account. Quite vague. The EP wanted to stress that the company must take the opinion into account. The Commission did not adopt that. However, the proposal now clearly states that the EWC must be able to provide its opinion prior to the adoption of the decision. And that management must provide a reasoned written response to this opinion.
Another point in the EP proposal concerned a problem that many EWCs struggle with. When EWC members ask to be consulted on a particular matter, they are often told that consultation is not required. For example, because the matter would not be transnational, or because it is not significant enough. The EP suggested that in future management should communicate such a refusal to the EWC in a substantiated, written response. Unfortunately, that idea was not adopted. The proposal to include companies that work under international franchise formulas under the EWC-RL has also been dropped. This is particularly unfortunate in the hotel and restaurant industry, where tens of thousands of people work under such formulas in Europe.
Next time: what will change regarding confidentiality?
Written by Sjef Stoop, trainer/advisor EWC Service
