The problem of national industrial relations traditions in European works councils: The example of BMW

Michael Whittall
Additional contact information
Michael Whittall: Nottingham Trent University, UK, michael.whittall@soziologie.wi.tu-muenchen.de

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2010, vol. 31, issue 4_suppl, 70-85

Abstract: In recent years IR scholars have attempted to understand how European works councils (EWCs) function. There exists a common consensus that there is much room for improvement. One key problem, maybe even the main problem, concerns the hold that national industrial relations practices continue to have over EWC delegates. This article argues that even though a high degree of suspicion existed among BMW and Rover delegates in the first exchanges following the foundation of the BMW EWC, a sense of empathy and respect for each other’s respective ways of doing business eventually prevailed. Undoubtedly, this was more noticeable among British trade unionists.

Keywords: co-determination; comparative industrial relations; European integration; European works councils (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X10375634 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:31:y:2010:i:4_suppl:p:70-85

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X10375634

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().