Staff representation bodies and what the 2017 merger changed

Until 2017, three bodies coexisted in French firms: staff delegates, the works council and the health, safety and working conditions committee, each with its own powers and resources.

They had been born at different times: staff delegates with the 1936 agreements, the works council in 1945, the health and safety committee in its extended form with the Auroux laws of 1982. That layering accounts for part of the complexity for which the whole was criticised.

That architecture was criticised for its complexity and defended for the specialisation it allowed, notably on health and safety questions, handled by a dedicated body with a right to commission expert reports.

The 2017 ordinances merged the three bodies into a single social and economic committee, with a compulsory specialised commission above a headcount threshold. Firms had until the beginning of 2020 to set up the new body.

The total number of representatives and the volume of delegation hours fell in most configurations, as assessments published by evaluation bodies have documented.

Evaluation reports published since, notably by the committee set up within France Stratégie, the government's policy planning agency, note a reduction in the number of representatives, an increased burden for those remaining, and a smaller place for health and working conditions questions on agendas.

They also note real administrative simplification for employers, the reform's stated objective, which makes the assessment dependent on the criterion chosen. Defenders of the reform add that a single body makes it possible to deal together with economic questions and their consequences for work, which the old architecture kept apart.

The body may call on an expert, whose cost is borne according to rules the reform changed, with a financial contribution from the body in several cases.

That contribution has been debated as a brake on use, an argument contested by supporters of the reform who see it as encouraging responsibility. Data on the evolution of the number of expert reports are partial, which for now prevents a choice between the two readings.

European systems differ greatly: some rest on a single elected body, others on direct union presence, others on co-determination with representation in governing bodies, of which Germany offers the most studied example.

Comparative work does not allow any model to be declared superior, since economic and social performance depends on too many other factors to be attributed to that single variable. It often draws on the distinction proposed by Albert Hirschman in 1970 between exit and voice, representation being a way of organising the latter.