Introduction
As you all know, Lisa Salas has taken over as Director of HR Policy Global/Europe. While Lisa takes the reins and develops plans to grow and take the network forward, I will continue to write the newsletter until the summer. From September onwards Lisa will assume editorial responsibility for the newsletter. In the meantime, there are plenty of developments to cover and analyse.
As has been our practise for the past few years (or is that decades?) the first issue of the year is a special preview of the key issues and topics to take note of as we start out 2026.
Some of these will be covered at our upcoming February meeting in Brussels. You can book your seat at that event by clicking on this link. The meeting promises to be an exciting one, not least as it will be the first with Lisa solely at the helm. I will be far away, relaxing, knowing that Lisa is in charge.
Finally… as events unfold during 2026, we will track all the issues discussed in this newsletter. As always, if you have any questions just send me an email at tom.hayes@beerg.com.
I’ll be around for a bit yet.
Looking at 2026
What can we expect from the European Union (and the UK) in the year ahead when it comes to employment law and labour relations? Obviously, we live in times of great uncertainty, and no one can say with any accuracy how things will unfold. We will track events as they develop in our newsletter and provide forums for discussions at our February, June, and October Network meetings in Brussels and Sitges.
At the outset, it is worth pointing out that there has been a significant change in the EU political climate in the past year, driven by a number of factors. For example, the Draghi Report has put a new emphasis on the global competitiveness of European industry, resulting in a drive to cut back on legislation that is seen as overreaching and counterproductive. Whether Europe likes it or not, it needs to be sensitive to the concerns of the current US administration which, to say the least, has a somewhat unorthodox approach to economic and trade policies. The need for Europe to invest more in its own defence puts new pressure on national budgets, already under strain because of continuing, anaemic economic growth.
All of which suggests a new pragmatism when it comes to future EU legislation or the revision of existing legislation. The days of the EU seeing itself as a “regulatory superpower” may well be over. This offers business an opportunity to help shape legislation to ensure that it is fit for purpose and does not just tick off the wish list of unions, NGOs, and other activists.
“Fit for purpose” means that employment legislation should take the genuine concerns of workers into consideration in its framing. Those concerns are not always properly articulated by the loudest voices. Unions have no monopoly on working class concerns.
EWC Directive
In brief: National transposition of 2025 EWC Directive must avoid burdens, limit lawyer fees; EWCs offer only non-binding opinions, no blocking power. Workshop in Sitges offers management tips.
For many readers of this newsletter, how the 2025 EWC Directive will be transposed into national law will be a matter of significant concern. Best that it be done properly, and care taken that unnecessary burdens and complications are avoided. In particular, legislation needs to ensure that EWCs do not become a “cash box” for experts and lawyers. The value they add to the process of transnational information and consultation is questionable… at best.
At the end of the information and consultation process, all an EWC can do is to offer a non-binding opinion. Nothing that employee-side experts or lawyers say is going to change that reality. EWCs have no leverage to delay or block management decisions. The unions asked for such leverage through the use of injunctions and the legislators explicitly said no to their demand. The words of the 2025 Directive cannot be construed in any way to suggest that, somehow or other, EWCs have blocking or delaying powers. They don’t, and management needs to make this clear to EWC/SNB members from the outset.
Together with Alan Wild, we have written a field guide to the 2025 EWC Directive which members can now download from the CHRO website at this link. There is also a short summary to accompany the guide
In April, in Sitges, Barcelona, we are running a workshop on how to manage the challenges posed by the new Directive for all undertakings in scope, whether you already have an EWC or not. There will be plenty written about what the new Directive says. Not so much on what you can and should do to manage matters to your advantage.
This workshop will provide the missing answers.
Book your place via link EWC III Expert Training Program
Pay Transparency Directive
In brief: June 2026 enforcement sparks gaps >5%: engage reps to fix or plan. Track national laws; doubtful on closing EU's 12% gender pay gap overall.
Much ink has been spilled, and thousands of seminar hours have been devoted to the coming into force at national level in June 2026 of the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive. As readers of this newsletter will already know, we have been somewhat doubtful about whether the Directive will move the overall dial on the 12% pay gap between men and women in the EU. Though it undoubtedly will, in some very particular situations.
Let’s see what the data throws up when companies begin to report. But that will be some years down the road and the granularity of pay data has never been what we in this network are about. Our focus of interest has always been labour relations in general and dealing with collective employee representation structures, in particular.
The coming challenge for employers will be how to manage what happens if the data shows gender pay gaps of more than 5% by grade or category which cannot be explained on objective non-gender grounds and which cannot be closed within six months of having been identified. The law requires that management engage with worker representatives to identify the reasons for the gap and to plan measures to close it. Not easy to do, even if there are already worker representatives in place. But what do you do if there are no such representatives in your business? How do you proceed?
National transposing legislation will clearly have to deal with this issue and, to date, in most member states of the EU that legislation is not yet available. It is difficult to know what to do when you do not know what the law says.
We will track this issue over the coming months, and we will keep you up to date as information on national laws becomes available.
UK Employment Bill
In Brief: UK's 2025 Employment Rights Act enables union workplace access amid declining membership. Unison's low-turnout left-wing leader exemplifies unions' weak mandate.
Just before Christmas, 2025, the UK’s Employment Rights Act came into force, having passed through parliament. You can read a detailed outline of what the Act involves in this comprehensive briefing from Lewis Silkin LLP here. Many of the Act’s provisions are subject to consultation with employers and unions before coming into force. This race is not yet run.
One provision in the Act that will be of particular interest to member companies is the one that gives new rights of access to workplaces to unions to promote trade union membership. In our view, no matter how finally framed, it is unlikely to change the fact of declining union membership to any great extent. Union density in the UK, like elsewhere in the Western legacy market economies, has been on a downward curve over the past twenty years. See a recent OECD publication (here) for the data.
The idea that union “missionaries” turning up in workplaces to spread the “good word” will turn things around seems unlikely. Unions still seem to be caught up in 20th century modes of thinking and have failed to work out a value proposition that today’s workforce will find attractive. Too many of those who work within unions seem overly interested in playing micro-groupuscule left-wing games that may be personally emotionally satisfying, but offer little to those they represent.
Just before Christmas I came across this:
Andrea Egan has been announced as the new leader of Unison, ousting Christina McAnea. Egan was thrown out of the Labour Party three years ago for her links to the Trotskyist group Socialist Appeal and has promised a more confrontational approach towards Sir Keir Starmer’s government. With Unite already attacking Labour over employment rights and benefits, among other issues, Egan’s victory means two of the three biggest unions are now run by openly hostile left-wingers critical of the PM’s administration.
Egan won by 60% to 40% for McAnea. But only 7.5% of Unison’s total membership took part in the ballot. So, Egan was elected as union general secretary by just under 5% of the membership. If I remember correctly, Sharon Graham of Unite was also elected general secretary with a similar percentage.
Surely, there is something wrong with internal trade union democracy when leaders are elected to office on such small numbers. Especially when those leaders then claim that they have a “mandate” to take the union in a radically different direction, as Egan appears to say in this article in the Financial Times.
“This result means ordinary Unison members are at long last taking charge of our union. We will put faith in members’ decisions and stand up to any employer, politician or cabinet minister who acts against our interests,” she said.
Is there not a sense of delusion here? An example of all that is wrong with the UK trade union movement. Unison has 1.4 million members. Egan was elected general secretary with the votes of 60,000 members, 60% of the 7.5% of the membership that voted. The UK workforce stands at 34.2 million members. I make the 60,000 who voted for Egan equal to something like 0.2% of the UK workforce of 34 million, though maths has never been my strong point.
To claim that you somehow have a mandate to represent the working class on the back of 60,000 votes is a bit of s stretch. To say that you have a mandate to challenge a Labour government that secured 9.8 million votes in the last general election is a further stretch.
I have absolutely no issue with trade unions wanting to represent their own members in any way they think appropriate. But trade unions are just another economic interest group like every other economic interest group. They have no mandate to speak on behalf of the entire working population.
EU: Due Diligence
In Brief: EU rolls back CSRD/CSDDD, but courts hit firms (Italy luxury, BNP Sudan, TotalEnergies Mozambique) over supply chain abuses. Know your supply and value chains.
The EU is significantly rolling back its due diligence legislation, as found in the CSRD and CSDDD. As reworked, they will be but a pale shadow of their former selves. In our view, not necessarily a bad thing, as both pieces of legislation involved major legislative overreach and both had a built-in presumption that “Europe knew best” when it came to upholding human rights, labour rights and environmental rights throughout corporate global supply chains. Turns out that this may not have been the case.
Even if EU due diligence legislation is being cut back, it does not mean that major multinationals are off the hook when it comes to labour and human rights standards in their supply chains. Companies are increasingly being taken to court by national supervisory authorities, indigenous community activists, and NGOs over alleged supply chain abuses. Unions are not so much involved as they often see such court cases as putting their members’ jobs at risk. To give some examples:
- This Financial Times article outlines how a determined prosecutor in Italy is going after major luxury goods brands over exploitative labour conditions in their supply chains. What he is doing has been challenged by employers and right-of-centre politicians as damaging the Italian economy but, for now, he is not backing off.
- Late December, IndustriALL Global Union, together with trade unions from Myanmar and Belgium, asked the Belgian National Contact Point (NCP) to urgently examine the operations of Sioen Industries in Myanmar under the OECD Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct.
- A US jury has found French bank BNP Paribas liable for complicity in Sudan atrocities. The bank is accused of contributing to atrocities committed under the regime of Omar al-Bashir. The plaintiffs told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burnt with cigarettes, slashed with a knife and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted. The eight-member jury sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75 million in damages. More here.
- The French energy group, TotalEnergies, is facing war crimes allegations, which it denies, over a massacre near its multi-billion-dollar international gas project in northern Mozambique in 2021. here
There are other examples we could reference, but you get the picture from the above.
The key takeaway? Be careful what you do and know what those you work with in your supply chain do. European law may have been cut back, but it is still best that you have deep knowledge of what is happening in your supply chain.
EU Laws: Other ones to watch for
For now, it is impossible to say what new employment laws the EU may propose in the year ahead. As we have noted, the political climate has changed, and the appetite for new laws it not what it was. If there are going to be new laws, they will be de minimus laws. Nonetheless, keep an eye on the following:
- A proposal for a Directive on the right to disconnect
- Also, a possible Directive on the use of AI in the workplace
- The possible revision of the existing EU Directives on public procurement, with the trade unions demanding the inclusion in such laws of “social conditionality” clauses.
The right to disconnect: We are a long way from having an EU law on the right to disconnect. Negotiations between the European social partners failed to result in an agreement in November 2023 and, thereafter, the EU Commission began the legislative process required by Article 154 of the EU Treaty, which mandates a two-stage consultation of the social partners.
That consultation process has been concluded, and the Commission is now drafting proposals for a Directive which will have to be considered by both the Council and the Parliament. It will be sometime in 2026 before we see the Commission’s proposals. Then assume it will take at least a year before the Council and the Parliament reach agreement on a text. Member States will have two years in which to transpose it into national law. So, at a minimum, it will be three to four years from now before we see an EU law on the right to disconnect in force at national level. What individual countries may do themselves in the meantime is another matter.
Ai in the Workplace: We are also a long way away from such a Directive. If it is an employment related Directive, then the Commission will have to consult the social partners in line with Article 154 of the Treaty. That process has not yet begun. It is unlikely that the social partners will reach an agreement between themselves on the issue. History says otherwise. Then, assuming the normal legislative process, it will be at least two years before a law is agreed. Then it has to be transposed into national law. All together, we will not see an EU law in force on AI in the workplace until at least five years from now. The EU does not move at the speed of AI developments.
Public Procurement: Around €2 trillion is spent by governments at every level in the EU on public procurement. This corresponds to approximately 14 % of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU's 27-member states. Public procurement covers everything from building roads, to buying coffee for the office, health and education services, not to mention the growing defence spend.
How such money is spent is governed by a suite of EU Directives which are currently under review. Unions are demanding the inclusion of “social conditionality” clauses that would see priority given to businesses which are covered by collective bargaining agreements and/or recognize trade unions. As only about 15% of private sector workers are in unions, and then mostly in heritage businesses such as auto and food, what the unions are asking the EU to do is to recruit members for them through the forced imposition of a collective bargaining requirement on businesses tendering for public sector contracts. Given the current political climate, it is unlikely that legislators will agree to such a demand, but the employer community need to make its voice heard on the issue.
