New forms of employee involvement at European level - the case of the European Company (SE)

Abstract

This article focuses on important but widely neglected problems of supranational employee involvement both at the level of information and consultation as well as at board level. It takes the most important pattern, the European Company (SE), and presents a systematic empirical analysis of its negotiated forms of worker representation and employee involvement. The questions addressed are: What do these new forms of collective voice and representation at the supranational level look like? What is the relevance of SEs for the development of an emerging system of European industrial relations in a broader perspective? Is the negotiated form of employee involvement likely to lead to new forms of harmonization and convergence or rather to heterogeneity and fragmentation?