Who usually opens and chairs a works council meeting in France?
Exactly: the operations manager does what is the job of the elected top employee representative in a company in this country.
That may be one reason why managers of French companies alienate the local customs.
The almost three-year-old statement by Carlos Tavares as head of the Opel parent company PSA has long been legendary: "We are still learning what co-determination means in Germany."
Thorsten Winter
Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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The Opel partner Segula Automotive in Rüsselsheim is also in French hands.
The service provider has been cross-cutting with employee representatives for weeks due to the planned reduction of over 100 of the 850 jobs.
And, according to IG Metall, has now opened two more construction sites in the company, which seem unusual for German companies.
Segula has blocked the IG Metall Darmstadt website in the company's internal network, as the union reports.
As heard from employee circles, this has been going on for weeks.
As early as April, employees tried in vain to access their union's website on the computer in the office.
And then Segula caused displeasure with a striking campaign to the detriment of the employee representatives: According to IG Metall, the company had a lettering that was attached only a few weeks ago removed from the glass front of the works council office.
A Segula spokeswoman confirms the process.
However, she denies the alleged previous permission of the management to apply the lettering, which was brought into the field by IG Metall.
"Strange Methods"
As the union announced, the works council had received “oral approval” from Segula at the end of 2019 to “be allowed to stick the works council lettering” on the glass front in front of his office. It then took some time for the new Segula logo to be released. As a result, the employee representatives could have commissioned the lettering later than planned. The consequences of the corona pandemic would therefore have also delayed the need to attach the striking note in blue to the committee.
“These are strange methods of intimidating the works council and hindering it in its work and do not belong in a democratic culture of co-determination. That is outrageous ”, says Ulrike Obermayr, managing director of IG Metall in Darmstadt, with a view to the removal of the lettering and the blocking of the website.
The Segula spokeswoman holds against it in both cases: There has been "no promise from the company that the works council can put a sign on the outside facade of the building". The management asked the works council to remove the sign independently, but it did not respond. "Since the outside facade is not labeled, we had the sign removed," said the company's spokeswoman for the FAZ. And: "The works council office is signposted inside the building." known.
The works council itself does not comment on the two points of contention. Regardless of this, Holger Jené, who has only been appointed managing director for a few weeks, continues to receive a lot of advance praise from the ranks of the employee representatives. He obviously has more foresight than his predecessor Martin Lange. Jené announced a customer offensive in an interview with the FAZ. According to him, Rüsselsheim should become the main location of Segula Automotive. According to his words, he does not want to shake the job cuts initiated by Lange.