Terms of employment and industrial relations in the European Union institutions and bodies

Since the Second World War there has been a constantly expanding growth in political and economic relations among states. The internationalisation of politics and the economy is to some extent global in its proportions, giving rise to formations of a world-wide dimension, while in other cases it focuses on major regions, as in the case of the European Union. A corollary of this increase in transnational interdependence is the creation and development of multinational organisations and their attendant bureaucratic apparatuses. Rather little is known about the working conditions and participation rights of the employees and about trade union representation in these transnational bodies. This contribution, based on a study (Hassel and Jacobi) commissioned by the Hans Böckler Foundation of the DGB in 1995, collates the most important information about industrial relations in the EU bodies and supplements this information with recommendations for the improvement of trade union representation. The article was written during a period spent as a guest at the University of Aalborg. I should like to thank my Danish colleagues for their critical remarks and stimulating discussions from which this article has benefitted.