Hacker News Reader

Comment by atypeoferror | Hacker News Reader

> N26's co-founders Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal have argued for an alternative, saying they believe the traditional German works council excludes international employees

This is patently false. I work at a medium-sized startup in Berlin, which is very international, with many of my colleagues speaking little German. We have recently created a Works Council (with support from the management) - and the council includes non-german speakers. It is certainly more work, as the work of the council involves a lot of german law - so training and documents need to be translated - however it is possible, and we have nothing even close to the resources of N26.

View on HN

I think they meant "international employees" as in "employees of non-german N26 Subsidiaries", not "non-german speaking employees of german-N26 entities".

Which, of course, is also a laughably bad argument, since there's nothing that prevents N26 from voluntarily granting those employees similar protections they'd enjoy if they were employed in Germany.

Exactly that. Our works council is doing everything bilingual. for our none native speakers. None the less it isn't allowed to represent the colleagues from the office in the Czech Republic as they are employed by a Czech subsidiary. A company could theoretically offer the same protections/conditions voluntarily. but the works council can't enforce that.

> there's nothing that prevents N26 from voluntarily granting those employees similar protections they'd enjoy if they were employed in Germany.

That sounds like a two-tier system to me. Inside-Germany employees having a say (backed by formal power) on their priorities; outside-Germany employees having no say.

A works council, like a union, does not always act unambiguously in the interests of all the employees. It's not that clear cut, because issues are complicated. What is good for some employees is bad for others.

If N26 decided to grant outside-Germany employees similar protections as inside-Germany, would the outside-Germany employees have an equal say and equal right to vote on what they want, or would only the inside-Germany employees actually be represented because the formal process is limited to just them?

It would be possible to structure codetermination in a legally binding way that employees no matter where in the world have the exact same rights (barring laws in other countries restricting such a thing). As that goes beyond what German law requires most companies would probably not agree to that but it clearly shows how hollow the statements of management in this case are.

(It should be noted that the relevant German law considers "Betriebe" and "Betriebsteile" as the unit where employees are represented, so each individual location of a company is usually considered separate and employees at one location have almost no say regarding employees in other locations. In that way, the lawmakers had the same thought process as you)

It is little known that the EU has already introduced provisions to form transnational (European) worker councils. The conditions are 1000 employees in total and 150 employees in at least two member countries each. Their powers are way more limited than German or Austrian worker councils though. They only have a right to be informed of company policy and its performance. Anybody knows whether N26 fulfils the size requirements?

That's a little bit complicated. Yes, the law behind German works councils (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) only applies to workers employed in Germany (Territorial principle), but the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) has ruled that international employees could also be govererned by the German works councils, if international employees are integrated into the German part of the company and are really depended on management in Germany (»„Ausstrahlung“ des Inlandsbetriebs« [1]). But it's a narrow definition.

But the law doesn't forbid applying agreements between the management and the works council (Betriebsvereinbarungen) to employees outside of Germany.

[1] https://www.vahlekuehnelbecker.de/2018/10/19/wann-ist-der-be...

In France things are simpler in a way: work councils are mandatory for companies with more than 50 employees.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com