EU: European Parliament prepares resolution on European company agreements

The European Parliament is taking part in the debate on the need for the public powers to step in to boost transnational company negotiations.  The Employment Committee is discussing a draft resolution developed by Thomas Händel, MEP from the European United Left–Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL), on “cross-border collective bargaining and transnational social dialogue.”  The text proposes an optional framework for this bargaining level and defends the idea of exclusive legitimacy of European trade union organizations, over EWCs, to negotiate European company agreements.  It also recommends introducing, in the medium term, a mediation structure and, in the long run, an independent three-tier system of European labor courts.  (Ref.  130286)
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An optional framework for transnational bargaining. “It is astonishing that, in view of the absence of legal provisions and considering the various different rules and the mass of associated problems, so many European transnational agreements have been concluded at all” reminds the draft resolution presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment on April 23. There were over 220 agreements in September 2011, listed on the website of the European Commission’s DG for employment.

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