What Do We Know About the New European Works Councils? Some Preliminary Evidence from Britain

EU legislation mandating European Works Councils (EWCs) was enacted in 1994. Although much descriptive information on the content of EWC agreements exists, little is known of the determinants and impact of these new institutional arrangements. In the present treatment, we exploit a question on EWC status in the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to provide the first econometric investigation of the determinants of (largely) voluntary transnational councils and their potential effect on establishment performance and employee attitudes. Many of the sharper criticisms of EWCs are not substantiated in the data, even if the benefits appear muted.