EU: European Trade Union Federations update their recommendations to the European Works Councils for managing Brexit

The trade union federations: IndustriAll Europe, Uni Europa, EFFAT, EPSU, ETF, and EFBWW have updated their Joint Recommendations to coordinators and workers’ representatives in SNBs, EWCs and SEs to anticipate the impact of Brexit on multinational companies. Negotiations on the new relationship between the UK and the EU are ongoing, but their outcome remains so uncertain that it makes any prediction about the future extremely difficult. While several scenarios are still possible, the trade union federations also emphasize a certain number of ‘knowns’. Given that everything will stay the same until 31 December 2020, the federations recall that this intervening period must be used to secure the rights of British representatives, and if the body is governed by British law, they encourage these representatives to ‘ensure that the choice of the new applicable national law is driven by an objective criterion and not just a management desire to take advantage of the situation to move to a low-standard country.’ Furthermore, the European Trade Union Federations strongly recommend putting Brexit as a recurring item on the agenda of EWC / SE meetings,’ and to to be informed and consulted on the possible impact of Brexit on the financial and economic situation, changes in production and sales, on employment in all countries, and on possible transfers of production, etc.