Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-07-Speech-3-112"
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"en.20080507.14.3-112"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the directive on European Works Councils was pioneering at the time of its adoption in 1994. Although it only set minimum requirements, it opened the way for employees of Community-scale groups to have the right to be informed and consulted, and was one of the founding elements of European labour law. But today, it lags behind changes in corporate reality, and behind the financial focus of the governance of companies, and it even lags behind other directives on informing and consulting employees that have been adopted since. It is therefore absolutely necessary to revise it, to ensure that in Community-scale groups, receiving information in good time and ensuring a high standard of consultation mean that alternatives can be found where employees are facing decisions about restructuring, site closures and massive job cuts.
Too often over the last few years we have witnessed sudden decisions to make collective redundancies without the possibility of employees really being consulted or their representatives really being able to have their say. Sometimes employees hear on the radio that they are going to be made redundant. Their representatives are only informed a few minutes before the decision is made public, generally at the time the stock exchanges open.
All of this underlines the urgent need for a revision. Furthermore, this revision was provided for in the text of the original directive, and in 2000 the mechanisms of this directive should have been updated. Since then, BusinessEurope – or UNICE as it was at the time – has done everything it can to block this revision, to ensure that the consultation ended in nothing.
That is why, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Bushill-Matthews, as rapporteur for the European Parliament with others in 2001, and having helped to get the request for an ambitious revision of this directive adopted by a large majority in Parliament, as was the case again in 2007, I cannot accept this criticism of the European Trade Union Confederation. It is sincere and it is prepared to negotiate. If this consultation, this negotiation results in nothing, it is up to the Commission to use its right of initiative. The Commission has a monopoly on the right of initiative. We respect that. However, that also gives it a responsibility, that of defending the general interest of Europe, of not allowing it to be held hostage by private interests, of ensuring that employees on our continent can count on the European Commission to defend their right to consultation and information, in good time, so that a genuine European social dialogue can exist in the major Community-scale groups."@en1
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