Employee representatives

What it means

Employee representatives is the Labour Code’s collective term for the trade union body, the works council, the employee trustee, and for health and safety purposes the safety representative as well.

They are not interchangeable. Only a trade union may conclude a collective agreement; a works council or a trustee has rights to information, consultation and inspection, but cannot bargain collectively.

Employee representatives are neither a company body nor its HR department: they act for the employees, and the employer must give them the means to do so, for instance time off for the role with wage compensation. Their members enjoy stronger protection: the employer may give them notice or terminate them immediately only with the prior consent of the body they sit on.

How it works in practice

Employees may elect a works council at an employer with at least fifty employees, and a trustee where there are fewer. Where no representative body exists at all, the employer decides these matters on its own.

Representatives sit in ordinary HR work: working time schedules, the holiday plan, the works rules, collective redundancies and every single notice of termination given by the employer. Some matters need consultation, others need actual consent.

Where a collective agreement raises premiums above the statutory level or sets how the social fund is used, we configure the payroll software to it rather than to the legal minimum. We ask for each new addendum before it takes effect, since a premium changed mid-month otherwise surfaces only when an employee queries a payslip.

What to watch out for

A notice of termination or an immediate termination must be discussed with the employee representatives beforehand, or it is invalid. If the employee wins in court, the company takes them back and pays wage compensation for the months the dispute ran, which usually beats any severance.

Works rules issued without the prior consent of the employee representatives are invalid. The company then cannot rely on them even when disciplining a breach of work discipline, and a dismissal built on their provisions has nothing to stand on. The flaw comes to light only in court, when it can no longer be fixed.