AI Framework Agreements in Germany: Your Blueprint for Working with the Works Council

Alexander is a lawyer and specialist in employment law (Fachanwalt für Arbeitsrecht) in the Simmons & Simmons Düsseldorf office. He advises on the full range of individual and collective labour law issues and on occupational pension schemes.

Alexander is Counsel in the German employment group. His main practice areas include representing companies in court disputes with members of the management and advising on remuneration schemes and on collective employment issues, including negotiating reconciliation of interests and social redundancy plans with works councils.

He has also a long-standing experience in advising on the employment issues of mergers and acquisitions as well as restructuring and outsourcing projects. Another of his core practice areas is advising on company pension schemes, including the transfer and outsourcing of pension liabilities and representing companies in court disputes with retired employees.

Alexander is recommended for employment law by kanzleimonitor. He has worked as a lawyer in the Düsseldorf office since 2001. He studied law at the University of Konstanz and qualified in 2000. Prior to joining Simmons & Simmons, he worked for a specialist labour law firm.

Alexander is a member of the European Employment Lawyers Association and the German Labour Court Association (Deutscher Arbeitsgerichtsverband). He frequently publishes on German employment law issues and hosts the HR Round Table in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt for clients and interested HR specialists. Alexander advises clients in German and English.

Daniela Steinau is Country HR Leader Germany & Site HR Manager at Eaton, based in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia. She has held the role since January 2025, leading a compliant, modern, and people-centric HR landscape across Eaton’s German sites, overseeing employee and labor relations, and supporting organizational transformation and workforce planning.

Steinau joined Eaton in 2017 and has held several HR leadership roles with increasing scope. As HR Business Partner for the Power Distribution Components business line (2022–2025), she supported six production sites and roughly 5,500 employees across the EMEA region.

Concurrently, as HR Manager for the Distribution Center Rheinbach (2021–2024), she led the HR management and reintegration of Eaton’s largest distribution center in EMEA, with 250 employees, overseeing a change in time-and-attendance and payroll systems, negotiating a transfer collective agreement with the union ver.di, and establishing new works council agreements to integrate the site into Eaton’s systems and processes.

Earlier at Eaton, as HR Manager (2017–2022), Steinau served as HR business partner for the Nettersheim operations site and the EMEA Sales organization of the Filtration Division, acting as the main HR contact for the group works council across three German filtration production sites.

Before Eaton, Steinau spent seven years as HR Manager Plant at Johnson Controls Recycling GmbH (2010–2017), responsible for all HR matters at the site, and nearly four years as HR Assistant/HR Generalist at Hayes Lemmerz Holding GmbH (2006–2010).

Steinau holds a degree in Diplom-Wirtschaftsjuristin (Business Law) with a focus on labor law and HR management from Westfälische Hochschule (2000–2005), and completed a Business Coach certification at the Akademie der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2024–2025).