France: law to reform industrial relations gets adopted

On 23 July, the French parliament gave final approval to adopt a draft law to simplify employee representation bodies and alleviate the level of formalism that so often characterizes social dialogue in the French system. Companies with fewer than 300 employees will be able to integrate their employee bodies (works council, health and safety committee, and employee delegates). Companies with 300 and more employees can, after majority agreement, alter their employee representative architecture. On the other hand however, the law also gives employee representatives new rights to promote union involvement.
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Simplifying employee representation bodies. The new law allows companies to regroup both bodies and procedures. Thus, companies with more 300 employees or more can, after receiving majority agreement, regroup all or some of their current employee representation bodies: employee delegates (DP), works councils (EC), and the health and safety committees (CHSCT) and the agreement can set out the operation rules (number of meetings, number of delegation hours accorded, training days, etc.). The abil

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