ILPC 2027

The ruling from the European Court of Justice on whether the German co-determination arrangement is in violation of the EU regulation on free movement is expected in April 2017. The question is whether Germany might keep the arrangements for Germans only or if employees in foreign subsidiaries owned by German companies should be included. The new British prime minster has hinted that some sort of employee representation at company board might be a good idea for Britain as well. Norway was one of the countries where employee board level representation was established in the 1970ies. Since then, a number of studies have confirmed that the arrangement is no longer controversial among the social partners; employers as well as the trade unions perceive the arrangement as a matter of course in the Norwegian system of workers participation. However, the world looked different in the 1970ies, most companies stayed inside national borders and company groups (‘konsern’) were far less important. Yet, in 1976 the right to demand employee representation in company groups was introduced. The same thresholds for demand is used; if the company (or the group as a whole) have more than 30 employees, one representative might be demanded by the employees, if more than 50 employees they might demand 1/3 of the seats. My paper will focus on the group arrangement and especially the Norwegian peculiarity of transnational representation. The 1976-legislation made no reference to the nationality of the subsidiaries; e.g. whether or not situated in Norway makes no difference. Employees in foreign subsidiaries own by a Norwegian group are both part of the electorate and are eligible for the positions. But, and very important, it is also possible to set up the group arrangement for only part of the group (e.g. include only some of the subsidiaries). The quality of the data is less that we would wish for concerning number of foreign subsidiaries but our estimate is that of the 4769 Norwegian groups with more than 30 employees 822 group control between 2000 and 2600 foreign companies. 141 groups have between 30 and 49 employees, 382 between 50 and 199 and 300 have more than 200 employees. Looking at the largest ones only, we find 81 groups with more than 1000 employees controlling between 400 and 470 foreign companies. Quality problems set aside; the potential for transnational representation is substantial. However, we have only identified 24 groups with foreign BLERs registered in Norway. Three key questions are addressed in the paper: first; why – and how – was the transnational representation established? Secondly: how do the representatives cooperate and what (if any) is the role of the trade union? And finally; does the arrangement contribute to increased employee and trade union collaboration across national borders?