Objectives
Guarantee & enforce workers' rights, improve legislation, etc. Find out about the ETUC's objectives regarding Democracy at work.
Workers’ right to information and consultation must be fully enforced before any management decisions that have consequences on employment or working conditions are taken. Unions and workers’ representatives must have access to expertise to discuss possible alternatives to management’s plans. A meaningful consultation with management and with public authorities aim at avoiding and mitigating adverse consequences such as redundancies. It is equally important to ensure the full involvement of workers' board-level representatives in discussions and decisions on restructurings.
Evaluations of the EWC Recast Directive have identified too many loopholes of the current legal framework. Both the financial and COVID-19 crisis have shown that the current legal framework does not effectively safeguard workers’ information, consultation and participation rights. Improvements to the legal framework on workers’ information, consultation and participation are key and need to be tabled now! The European trade union movement is actively pushing for a revision of the EWC Directive and a new horizontal framework on information, consultation and participation for European company forms and for companies making use of EU company law instruments enabling company mobility.
The Democracy at Work strategy aims at increasing trade union efforts, strengthening the coordination and mobilising affiliates and workers’ representatives.
The ETUC wants to increase the awareness of the importance of information, consultation and participation rights, in particular in restructuring processes.