The institutional design of the federal system of interlocking interest representation at DaimlerChrysler, in particular the clear primacy of the local level, goes a long way towards ensuring that no level enjoys a monopoly on decision-making power. Issues are effectively channelled through the system, thereby ensuring that regardless of the final formal outcome, everyone has been able to have his or her say.
At the same time, it is instructive to investigate which level – the local level or the central level – is perceived to have “the last word” in matters of policy or strategy. In other words, who calls the tune? In the postal survey, local works council members were asked to assess which level was decisive in determining the underlying policy behind employee representation. Respondents were asked to rank the following
committees in the order of their importance in determining the actual policy or strategy of employee representation: local works council, the committees of the central works council, the central works council itself, the group works council, the European Works Council, and the Supervisory Board.
The members of the Central Works Council were also asked to rank the various
committees. There is one important difference between the two data sets, however: the list of committees which the CWC members were asked to rank in order of their importance included the executive committee of the CWC, i.e., the Central Works Committee, rather than the commissions of the CWC. It emerged early on in the course of the interviews with the CWC members that this official executive committee was, in fact, defunct -- indeed, five CWC members did not include the central (executive) committee in their ranking, saying that it did not exist (see Section 5.4). In order to ensure the internal comparability of the data among the CWC members’ responses, this question was retained. In the postal survey of local works council members, however, the central works committee was replaced with the commissions of the CWC.
The results of this ranking exercise present an illuminating picture of employee
representatives’ perception of the role played by the different levels in determining the actual policy of interest representation.
The most overarching levels have the least influence
For both the “ordinary” local works council members and the CWC members, both the European Works Council and the Group Works Council (both of which cover all of DaimlerChrysler’s operations in all product divisions, not just the automotive sector), ranked low in terms of their influence on overall policy determination. 83% of local works council members surveyed and 90% of CWC members ranked the Group Works Council at 4th or 5th place. As for the European Works Council, both groups of
respondents clearly placed it at the lower end of the spectrum: 95% of local works council members and all of the CWC members placed it at 5th or 6th place. (Of these, 62% of local works council members and 69% of CWC members put the EWC last.) As for the Supervisory Board, half of which is made up of internal or external (trade union) employee representatives, 79% of the local works council members surveyed spread its influence evenly over the 4th, 5th and 6th places. By contrast, 76% of CWC members ranked the Supervisory Board at 3rd or 4th place, suggesting that in their experience, some key issues related to IR at the company level are actually settled in
the context of the Supervisory Board, rather than within the multi-tiered system of works councils.
Primacy of the local level, supporting role of the CWC
A similarly clear pattern emerged with respect to the influence of the local works councils on the one hand and the Central Works Council on the other.
Figure 23 illustrates quite clearly that for a majority of respondents, the local works councils rank first before the Central Works Council. For 60% of local works council members surveyed, local works councils play the most important role in the
determination of policy and strategy in employee representation across the company. 55% of the CWC members also stated that the local level is the most important strategic locus. The Central Works Council clearly ranks second in importance from the point of view of both the local works council members as well as the CWC members
themselves: 49% of local works council members and 59% of CWC members ranked the Central Works Council as the second most important committee in policy
determination. The operative or executive level of policy determination ranks third for both groups: 38% of the CWC members ranked the Central Works (executive)
Committee at third place, while 48% of local works council members ranked the operative level of the CWC commissions clearly at third place.
Figure 23: Who calls the tune? The determination of policy
Where is actual policy determined?
60% 55% 27% 28% 16% 21% 49% 59% 14% 14% 20% 14%
In the local works council, according to local works council members
surveyed
In the local works council, according to CWC members In the CWC, according to local works council members surveyed In the CWC, according to CWC members themselves
These results can be interpreted to mean that while the local works councils play the definitive role in determining actual policy, the CWC also plays a very important role. For 27% of local works council members, and for 28% of CWC members, the CWC even ranked 1st in terms of its importance in defining overall strategy and policy. The clear alignment of the commissions at third place (48%) or even at second place (30%) suggests that the commissions are seen to play a crucial role in developing policy and strategy, but that the final decisions and thus the final responsibility lies with the local works councils or in the CWC.
In comparison with the other committees, whose ranking was fairly consistent, the ranking of the local works council is a bit erratic. For 60% of the survey respondents the local works council ranked first; nearly one third ranked it at second (16%) or third (14%) place. However, for a minority of respondents, the local works councils play a negligible role in the actual determination of policy. For 5% of the local works council members and 7% (2 members) of the CWC, local works councils ranked fourth, and 2% of the local works council members surveyed and one member of the CWC ranked it at fifth place. Finally, 3% of the local works council members but none of the CWC members ranked the local works council as least important at 6th place.
In contrast, not a single local works council member ranked the CWC at lower than 4th place. A full 97% of local works council members and all of the CWC members ranked the CWC at first, second or third place. This consistently high ranking of the Central Works Council may be the result of a bias induced by the survey itself, which was clearly focussed on the CWC. At the same time, it could also mean that for some respondents, the actual influence of the single local works council pales against the collective impact of the very active CWC.
The representation of sites in the CWC
The different plants at DaimlerChrysler vary greatly in size, from the smallest factory in Hamburg with its ca. 2,000 employees to the giant plant in Sindelfingen which employs over 36,000 people. Each site delegates two members to the CWC; in the case of a vote, each CWC member has as many votes as employees at the plant from which he or she is delegated. Next to the plants, there are of course the R&D sites and the Sales and Service establishments; the latter are grouped into five districts which each delegate a representatives to the CWC.
In the postal survey, the local works council members from the plants were asked to assess whether the different sites were appropriately represented within the CWC. The members of the CWC were asked the same questions. Here, the points of view of both the constituents (the local works councils) as well as their representatives (the CWC members) were broadly consistent with one another.
82% of local works council members indicated that they perceive that the different sites are appropriately represented in the CWC. All but one of the CWC members felt this to be the case, demonstrating a high degree of faith in the basic institutional structure of site-by-site representation within the CWC as well as in the system of weighted
majority voting. This does not mean, however, that the works councillors feel that their needs are always taken enough into account: 37% of local works council members and six out of twenty-nine CWC members felt that the needs of their site were not always sufficiently taken into account in the CWC.
From the point of view of just over half of the local works council members, the CWC often decides in the interests of the largest sites. In contrast, less than a third of the CWC members shared this view. As can be expected, this perception was prevalent among the respondents from smaller sites, but even representatives from larger plants recognised that they enjoyed a privileged position within the CWC. In particular, 38% of respondents from the second largest plant at Untertürkheim also agreed that the CWC tended to act more in the interests of the largest sites.
The CWC and the local works councils
As mentioned above, the actual policy and strategy of employee representatives is fixed within the contested arena of competing and sometimes overlapping
competences of the local works councils and the central works council. A range of questions in the postal survey aimed to capture the local works councillors’ perception of this contested arena. Here, the perceptions of the local works council members and the CWC members differ widely.
For the majority of local works council members, the distribution of decision-making competences seems to be fairly balanced. A closer look at the minority opinion however, allows a more focussed view: According to 44% of local works council members, the CWC pulls too much decision-making authority upwards at the expense of the local works councils’ autonomy. By contrast, only a single CWC member tended towards this assessment of the CWC as an authoritarian, overbearing central body. At the same time, a large majority of the CWC, 79%, only somewhat disagreed that the
CWC tended to pull decisions upwards, while only five CWC members disagreed with this statement outright. This indicates that there is at least widespread sensitivity towards the danger that the CWC might overstep its boundaries.
It has been noted that the local works councils are free to mandate the CWC to deal with an issue on its behalf; some local works council members I spoke with voiced the opinion that some local works councils tended to simply offload issues that they were too weak to settle at the local level. This view is shared by 26% of local works council members. However, only five CWC members somewhat agreed with this statement that local works councils for their part delegate too much decision-making authority to the CWC, while the remaining 24 CWC members did not feel that the CWC is
burdened with too many issues that the local works councils should solve on their own. Here, too, though, 69% of the CWC members only “somewhat” disagreed with this assertion, thus suggesting that they recognise that the temptation may at times be high for a local works council under pressure to try to duck an issue by delegating it to the CWC.