EWPCC Annual Conference
Beyond Restructuring: the role of workers’ participation in addressing intensified cross-border standardisation and centralisation in multinational corporations
The Conference will be held in Brussels (International Trade Union House) on 11 - 12 December 2017. You are hereby cordially invited to apply for registration.
The EWPCC Conferences regularly bring together employee representatives and other practitioners, academic experts, trade unions and policy-makers to discuss relevant research and debate topical issues around workers’ participation.
The next EWPCC Conference will address management policy in multinational companies. European workers’ participation is about far more than coping with restructuring in the EWC. Recently, there has been a growing awareness that as multinational companies increasingly standardise and centralise business and industrial relations activities across borders, more and more decisions are taken out of the national and local arenas of company decision-making. These shifts create new challenges for workers’ participation at the local, national and European levels. Workers’ representatives need to have a better understanding of why and how management pursues these strategies, in order to be able to recognize their potential impacts on workers’ rights and employment in time, and address them accordingly.
Seeking to better understand the origins and strategic motivations behind intensified cross-border reorganisation measures, the EWPCC has commissioned expert research. Drawing on the state of the art in management scholarship as well as on expert interviews with managers and consultants, this research has identified the six key trends in standardisation and centralisation within MNCs which can be expected to have the greatest impact on workers’ participation practice.
The results of this research will be presented at the Conference. In plenary sessions and focused working groups, and using examples drawn from practice and insights gained from research we will then explore the potential impact of multi-level workers’ participation on the six most relevant trends of cross-border standardisation identified:
- the return of lean production principles: “lean thinking”
- strategic outsourcing and standardization
- new trends of standardization in HRM
- IT-based standardization
- Big Data and Industry/Services 4.0
- compliance-induced process standardisation.
Board-level employee representatives and members of EWC and SE-Works Councils are warmly invited to the conference, as are trade union and academic experts in this field.
PRACTICAL INFO
Registration
Please apply for registration on-line at your earliest convenience and preferably by December 5, 2017.
Working languages
We plan to provide interpretation in English, German, French and ...
Travel
After receipt of your participation confirmation, you will be asked to make your own travel bookings. If your ticket price will exceed 400 Euro, please contact us in advance. All travel costs will be reimbursed after the conference and are covered by the European Worker Participation Fund for participants from member states of the European Union.
Travel costs will be reimbursed on the basis of the most economic fare available (economy/APEX/PEX air fares), in accordance with European Commission regulations. Participants are asked to use public transport wherever possible. As a rule, taxis will not be reimbursed.
Hotel Accommodation
Hotel accommodation will be booked and prepaid by the ETUI. Please indicate your required check-in and check-out date on the registration page.
Additional information
Should you need any additional information please do not hesitate to contact our secretariat, Catherine Rihoux, crihoux@etui.org