European works council

The European Court of Justice has thrown out a claim from an employer that it did not need to

give information to employee reps about the number of employees because it had no central management.

The European works council directive says employee representatives have a right to know how many employees there are in the group, so that they can find out whether the company is subject to the legislation, which is based on employment thresholds.

The court found that the employer in this case, a German company called Bofrost, could not escape from this obligation by structuring itself in an unusual way. Employee representatives had a right to be given any information on employee numbers the company already had or was able to obtain.