AWS Works Council Germany
aws-works-council-initiative.de
aws-works-council-initiative.de
TL;DR: It's a non-union form of worker representation with separate legal status in countries like France and Germany. While not unions, their existence isn't incompatible with unionization.
That honestly does NOT reassure me. I'm getting flashbacks to being chosen last during football practice. While I can convince tech leads of my skills, I have never been a very popular guy and when it comes to being judged by a crowd, I fear they will pick the guy who is more handsome, taller, or Biodeutsch, or who has a more „sympathisch“ profile.
They have no powers to make any subjective judgements about hiring. They can only object to a hiring if the company has contradicted the law or it's own policies.
For instance if the company makes a team of Android developers redundant on Monday and then hires an external Android developer on Tuesday, the Works Council would want to know a very good reason why one of the potential internal candidates was not selected instead.
I guess a company could ask their opinion if they wanted to, but they are not legally compelled to do so. In my experience no-one from the works council is physically present in interviews either. They are just informed afterwards that a hiring decision is made and they have to approve or reject it.
This is probably the AWS lead initiative to place their preferred people into a council they see being formed anyways.
Its more likely to me that they use that copyright as they are an official and legal part of the company as works council.
Its creation can be forced by a vote of the employees and the council has a legal special status. This probably comes as a reaction to multiple distribution centers around Germany doing exactly that and forcing the creation of local work councils with the help of unions.
It's basically like a government of the company and a union is just another party that can get elected.
It's just that the only way a union member can get into a work council is getting elected just like every other employee.
A Works Council is entirely company specific. A Union is usually concerned with an entire sector and deals with company-specific issues only a limited way. In practice the Union organisations often provide assistance and advice to a Works Council, even to companies in which they are not active as a Union.