PhD student: Mrs M. Verhagen

Promotors: F. Pennings, T. Jaspers

Duration: 1/9/2016 - 31/8/2010

Abstract:

Trade unions and other workers organizations represent employees in negotiations on their working conditions, but also in works councils and sectoral and national consultations. Collectively defending workers interests and the improvement of working conditions are important elements of the system of labour relations and have acquired a central place in labour law. A core part of the systems is the conclusion of collective agreements either by trade unions or by works councils which have a legally binding effect to the employees covered. These workers representing bodies (i.e. trade unions or works councils) can include provisions in their agreements in their collective agreements that deviate in peius from statutory law or from existing collective agreements. This may affect the position of individual workers and therefore it is important to study if the latter are involved in the decision making procedures. By focusing on this, a very interesting and important dimension of citizenship is addressed: that of the interaction of individual rights and obligations with those of the bodies or organizations representing them. Since countries may have quite different approaches we opted for a comparative study of, at least, the Netherlands and France; this will also address the EU dimension of representation and consultation of workers.