In line with our commitment to supporting social dialogue and ensuring that EWCs serve a useful purpose, we assess the strengths and weaknesses of your agreements.
The revised provisions of the EWC Directive call on employees or their representatives to initiate negotiations to establish a “real” EWC where the current body is based on an ‘anticipatory agreement’, or to renegotiate certain provisions of their agreement where it was concluded after 22 September 1996. With our experts, we can help you assess your agreement in light of the new standards and develop a negotiation strategy.
Why This Training Matters
Renegotiating an agreement does not necessarily lead to a better agreement… It is counterintuitive, but it is a reality.
Some EWCs have disappeared for a while because negotiations failed to reach a conclusion. With our experts, we offer a collective analysis of your agreement and practices, the revised directive and future transposition regulations, to give you all the information you need to decide whether or not to enter into negotiations and to help you develop a negotiation strategy.
Who It’s For
This training is ideal for:
What the Training Covers
Each training course is tailored to the specificities of your agreement and practices, but here are some examples:
Exploration of the revised directive
- What are the main changes
- What will happen to your agreement, depending on when your EWC was established
- How the revised directive will be implemented and its effects
Comparison between your agreement and the revised directive
- Comparative analysis by working groups
- Feedback from the working groups in plenary
- Discussion on areas for improvement in the agreement
3 Negotiation strategy
- Determine the negotiation process based on your agreement
- Ensure the functioning of the European Works Council during negotiations
- Develop an action plan
Learning Objectives
By the end of the training, participants will:
Gain
a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their agreement
Know
the new legal framework and the applicable national implementation measures
Understand
how the renegotiation of their agreement might proceed
Developed
an action plan to prepare for renegotiation
Trainers profiles
Frédéric Turlan
Director, Editor of IR Notes
Frédéric is an expert in industrial relations. He has an extensive experience of writing and editing industrial relations and labour law material for a practitioner and policymaker audience.
He has written numerous reports, comparative studies and analyses for Eurofound, as national correspondent for France, and for other research centres across Europe on industrial relations and working conditions issues. He also organised numerous in-house training for European Works’ Councils on EU labour law, industrial relations and other relevant issues for EWCs and transnational social dialogue.
Christophe Teissier
Project manager, Ultra Laborans
Christophe trained as a lawyer and worked for the French Ministry of Research. In 2007, he joined Astrées (which became Ultra Laborans in 2023) to work on developments in social dialogue. Since then, he has been working on reinventing deliberative processes in companies, with a view to better tackling today’s major societal challenges. He heads up Ultra Laborans’ social dialogue expertise and European projects. In this capacity, he has developed recognised expertise at European level on issues relating to social dialogue and its players. He has been involved on numerous occasions in training members of European Works Councils in various sectors, notably alongside IR SHARE. Recently, he trained the EWCs of Veolia (2023), Suez (2023), BNP Paribas (2022), Generali (2021) and SCOR (2021).
Jean-Philippe Lhernould
Professor of law at the University of Poitiers
Jean-Philippe Lhernould is a professor of law at the University of Poitiers, specialising in European social law. He has worked for many years for the European institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, European Labour Authority), in particular as a pre-legislative expert. In addition to his academic activities, he works as a lawyer for law firms and international groups in the field of European employment law (EWCs, international restructuring, international employment contracts, etc.); he is also a well-known trainer for various audiences, including social partners, at national and European level.
