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When do European Works Councils become useful to employees? Lessons learned from the Alstom / Switzerland case

Based on four case studies, this article analyses the significance of Swiss participation in European Works Councils (EWCs) in foreign companies, coming to the conclusion that it is generally low. However, in one case, that of the French-based engineering company Alstom, two sequences of events show that, against a background of the general effectiveness of the Alstom EWC and the relative importance of its Swiss plants, Swiss employees clearly benefit from EWC participation, enjoying the same guarantees and subject to the same procedures as employees in other European countries. The perception of such benefit among employee stakeholders is however dependent on local constellations.