In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.

Whether those representative act on their own, or join a national union or syndicate, is their own decision, and they're elected every 4 years.

Any meeting or importance between an employee and his employer, he can request one of the representative be present to assist him (and in some type of meeting, it is pretty much mandatory to avoid employer pressuring against).

Etc etc ...

Our system is far from perfect, but at least having SOMEONE in the company to turn to seem to make sense to me.