Works council expertise 'à la française' looking to extend across Europe

Works council expertise ‘à la française’ looking to extend across Europe

For several years works council specialist consultants have been active in both European Commission funded sector-level social dialogue, as well as in French EWCs. More recently however, these consultancy experts have also been working with non-French EWCs, oftentimes with the backing of local trade union bodies, and they have periodically succeeded in creating sustainable working industrial relations. Although concentrated in number, and albeit if these consultancy companies do vary in actual size, these firms’ strategies stem from a desire to grow amid a contracting domestic market growth and/or from a strategy to seize fresh opportunities. The very act of moving into a more international landscape has meant they have had to invent new business methods and successfully argue for and assert their utility.

The two largest and most well-known actors in employee representation body consultancy services, Secafi and Syndex, are both well-known to have been active internationally for several years, albeit each using distinctively different approaches. Each firm has a office in Brussels (different sized) located within the building that houses both the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and several other union federations (including IndustriAll Europe). While Secafi operates with its own team of internal experts and network of consultants, Syndex has chosen to establish several smaller structures across a number of European countries (Belgium, Poland, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and most recently in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland), “each time by partnering with at least one local trade union body,” Olivier Laviolette, Syndex Director explained to Planet Labor. Syndex’s latest significant venture has been to partner with the German consultancy firm Wilke Maack Partners,…

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