Systems of Employee Representation at the Enterprise. A Comparative Study

Amid the trend towards decentralized industrial relations, various new and modified systems of employee representation are taking hold in many countries worldwide. In this highly informative examination of this field of international labour law – originally presented as a series of papers for the 11th JILPT Comparative Labor Law Seminar held in Tokyo in February 2012 – twelve distinguished scholars from Australia, China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States describe their countries’ current perspectives on this issue, along with their own analysis and commentary. Among the specific questions addressed for each jurisdiction are the following:

• What is the legal framework for an employee representation system?

• How is the representative body formed and what are its declared powers?

• Are there legal mechanisms preventing intervention by the employer?

• Are non-standard employees involved?

• What methods of deliberation and decision-making are used?

• How are the activities of representatives protected?
• Who bears the costs?

• What is the relationship with collective bargaining? With labour unions?

Each contributor also describes typical ways in which the employee representative system works, offering concrete examples such as dismissal, wage determination, and equal treatment. Some deal with situations in which employee representation is in fact nonexistent or malfunctioning in real workplaces. There is also pervasive attention paid to the fundamental matter of what ‘representation’ is for, and the probable future direction of employee representation.

Given the need to secure representation for non-union and non-standard employees at the workplace, these reports on the conditions and new developments in this important field provide ample basis on which to build a better system of employee representation in this era of diversified workforces in the globalized market.