Hacker News Reader

Comment by amalgamated_inc | Hacker News Reader

Having a supervisory board w/ 1/2 of members representing (non-management) employees is mandatory by law for any corporation over 50 (?) employees in Germany.

The "General Works Council" is just that board, I believe. So this is quite a normal setup for a large German company.

View on HN

General Works Council is the Betriebsrat (100% employees, not mandatory, but employees cannot be stopped from forming one), the board is the Aufsichtsrat (50% employees, mandatory for large corporations). It works really well most of the time.

It never mandatory to have a Betriebsrat in Germany even with 100k employees you could not have one. You can however start one already with 5 full-time employees. Companies tend to have one around 50+ employees because before that it rarely makes sense

So it's not mandatory if somehow all employees decided not to form one, but if any of them wanted to, it's mandatory to let them and presumably support them/listen to them in some way?

Basically it’s not mandatory in the sense that you will not be fined as a company if you do not have one. However, employees can make a motion to elect a Betriebsrat (works council) in a given location. Then, if 3 locations have a local Betriebsrat the Gesamtbetriebsrat can be formed which is regularly elected across the whole German staff. Grocery chains like Lidl and Aldi have prevented the formation of a Betriebsrat by employing union busting style measures (intimidating or firing staff, etc).

Iirc teslas giga fab does not have an elected Betriebsrat.

Since many American companies incorporate in Germany for their German branches, they can also face Betriebsrats elections.

Overall I do think a Betriebsrat is a net positive for a company. It’s not always as profit oriented as an executive but it has a long term interest in the company as opposed to executives who just think in quarter years and about keeping shareholders happy.

Thanks for the explainer!

As always with Germans, the answer is "it's really complicated" lol

Tesla does have a Betriebsrat if I recall correctly.

It was formed very early meaning before most of the Frontline employees were hired .

There was criticism at the time that it was filled with people loyal to management rather than workers

Ah smart Trick by Tesla then, elections every 7 years iirc so Tesla managed to avert a strong works council for the first years

lol ok that's pretty advanced :) if you can't bust 'em, you can't join 'em, at least lace them with cronies for the first couple years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com