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PAGEEUROPEAN REVIEW
FINANCIAL PARTICIPATION, which includes such ideas as employee share ownership and profit-sharing, has been around for a long time. However trade union and employer responses to it have varied from outright rejection to enthusiastic embrace. Now the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has produced a report which sets out a considered response based on the experiences of various individual unions and the preferences of the confederation concerning the form of future schemes. The report mentions recently instituted schemes such as at Audi where the company works council at the German car producer concluded an agreement on the introduction of a new permanent profit-sharing system for all employees, which comes into effect from 1998. The profit share will be paid on an annual basis for the previous financial year. At state-owned Telecom Eireann in Ireland, management and trade unions are transforming the telecommunications company by a novel employee share ownership plan. The company's 11,000 unionised employees are seeking a shareholding of up to 15%. The privatisation of the French steel company Usinor in 1995 provided the opportunity to negotiate a new employee share ownership scheme.
The ETUC prefers collective agreements at national or industry level to define at least a basic framework for financial participation.They think that all workers should have an opportunity to participate in employee share ownership or wealth creation. Otherwise, the report says, 'a very considerable number of employees', those in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for example, 'would rarely have an opportunity for 'financial participation'. However, according to the ETUC, financial participation should not take the place of industrial democracy. 'There certainly is a right of workers to be involved in decision making at the level of the undertaking. This right, however, is a basic social right of workers and not linked to the ownership of shares'. Also the tax environment has to be sympathetic to all possible schemes of financial participation. The report criticises member states which have stopped tax benefits for the rather moderate programmes of wealth creation, which were set up in earlier years. Several confederations from individual countries have taken up positions on financial participation. The programme of the German TUC (DGB), adopted at their Congress in Dresden in 1996 declares itself in favour of better employee participation in productive capital and the French CFDT regards financial participation as an interesting opportunity to increase the collective purchasing power of employees. At its 1997 Congress the British TUC called for the extension of employee share option schemes as they are regarded as a part of a 'stakeholder society'.
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ETUC working paper on Financial Participation by Dr. Willy Buschak available at: |
A new Eurostat survey has found that 9 out of 10 companies in the European Union employ fewer than 10 people. Meanwhile the journal Employment Observatory Trends has inquired into self-employment. Both sets of figures seem to suggest that small firms play a decisive role within the EU but that their importance varies greatly between member states. Figures given are percentages of total numbers employed in each country. The figures are for 1994 and 1995.
Country |
In firms with 0-9 employees(%) |
Self-employment (%) |
|
|
|
|
|
Greece |
56.6 |
38.5 |
|
Italy |
47.8 |
25.6 |
|
Spain |
47.5 |
22.6 |
|
Belgium |
45.8 |
15.8 |
|
Portugal |
38.4 |
26.3 |
|
EU15 |
32.8 |
15.5 |
|
France |
32.4 |
11.8 |
|
Denmark |
29.0 |
8.5 |
|
UK |
28.9 |
13.1 |
|
Sweden |
26.7 |
11.4 |
|
Netherlands |
26.0 |
11.1 |
|
Finland |
24.6 |
14.4 |
|
Austria |
24.0 |
11.4 |
|
Germany |
23.5 |
9.5 |
|
Luxembourg |
22.9 |
10.7 |
|
Ireland |
22.7 |
21.0 |
|
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