Abstract: | Employee involvement started to develop in the early 20th Century. Due to the first and second World War the progress went slow down, but revived in the fifties of the 20th Century. During this time the first formation of the European Union found a place (European Coal and Steel Community) and there was an idea for a transnational form of the company already born. Because of the problems and very different systems of workers' involvement in the Member State of EU, precisely workers participation pose the biggest problem for the adoption of the Statute of the SE, which was finally adopted after more than thirty years of negotiations, on 8th of October 2001. The Statute of the Societas Europaea consists of Regulation No. 2157/2001 and Directive No. 2001/86 regarding the involvement of employees. In the field of workers' participation it has never come to complete harmonization because of too many diverse national systems. An important factor in the Directive is that a lot of questions about the workers’ co-decision refer to the national law of the participating companies. The central objective of the master's thesis is examination and analysis of worker participation in the management of the European company (SE). In the case of establishment of SE the choice of the model of management (one- or two-tier system) is left to the founder. Two-tier system with the Supervisory Board is connected with the participation of employees in corporate governance. The choice in which country SE should have a registered office is also influenced by the fact of whether the State legitimized the participation of workers or not, which affects the allocation of workers' participation; participation in SE may not be less than it was before the establishment of the SE (before-and-after principle). In accordance with this Directive, any narrowing of the existing workers’ rights to participate is depended on the qualified majority when deciding on the model. When there is no agreement between the parties with regard to the negotiating model of workers’ participation, the standard rules could be applied. Those are tied to the highest standard of workers' participation in founder companies and there is just awareness in the event of failed negotiations, that the workers will have a limited willingness for negotiations or will make them more difficult, because of their better negotiating position in this case. In the case where the negotiating side cannot agree on the working model of the co-decision procedure and in the event of failure to apply the standard rules, it cannot come to the establishment of the SE.
With the Companies Act (Zakon o gospodarskih družbah ZGD) since 1993 in Slovenia the two-tier management system along the lines of the German legislation is used. After the implementation of the Regulation SE and the new Companies act (ZGD-1) is also for domestic companies a choice between one-tier and two-tier management system allowed. Also in the area of labor legislation, participation in the management of companies in Slovenia followed under German legislation, where the rights of the worker participation in management by the law are widely covered, followed by practice, too. So this area is raised to the test with the entry into force of two models of governance, in which case it is necessary to take into account that the right to participation of workers in Slovenia, one of the fundamental rights, is written in the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia.
In the EU in the management of companies in the forefront is the stakeholders’ model, which means that in the front are not placed only the objectives of the shareholders, but also the social objectives of the wider society. The EU is already committed to the social dialogue with the Treaty on the functioning of the EU. The European Commission is committed to promoting the dialogue between the social partners, to offering the balanced support to the both parties. |
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