First meeting of Wipro European Works Council takes place in Dublin.

Irish Government need to do more to support European Works Councils say FSU.

The first constitutional meeting of the Wipro European Work Council (EWC) has taken place this week at Wipro’s head office in Ballsbridge. The Indian tech company with 240,000 employees worldwide, is the first Indian tech company to establish an EWC in Ireland.

13 of the 15 European elected employee representatives and senior management from Wipro which included Pierre Bruno, CEO Europe, Deepak Parija, Senior Vice President Europe, and Tomas Stuhm, Head of Employee Relations attended the meeting.

The Financial Services Union (FSU) were represented by Mandy La Combre, Senior Industrial Relations Officer, who was instrumental in supporting the Special Negotiating Body (SNB) throughout the negotiations on the establishment of the EWC.

The purpose of European Works Councils is to bring workers across Europe together to be informed and consulted on transnational matters.

Commenting on the establishment of the EWC and the holding of its first meeting in Dublin Ms La Combre said:

“Wipro are the first Indian Tech company to agree to set up a European Works Council and the Financial Services Union are the first Union in Ireland to successfully support those negotiations for an EWC registered in this jurisdiction. The holding of the meeting this week was a significant achievement and something worker representatives had been advocating on for a long time.

The rise in the number of EWC’s relocating to Ireland has drawn attention to the weakness in the law around dispute resolution and confidentiality which mark real cause for concern. The European parliament have advocated for a full review of the EWC directive and the Irish Government  must do more to make EWC’s in this country more workable”.

Paul Dillon of Syndex, the organisation who provided comprehensive advice and training to both the SNB and EWC representatives said: “Wipro is a major multinational company with 240,000 employees and 30,000 staff in Europe. The Wipro EWC is registered under Irish Law and its establishment marks another significant development in the field of Irish registered agreements”.

Ms La Combre concluded :“FSU and Syndex, were chosen by the Wipro Senior Negotiating Body as the designated ‘experts’ to assist the formation of the EWC which helped ensure the process was very employee centric.”

ENDS