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On 11 December 2019, the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) in London, the first instance in British EWC law, ruled on a complaint filed by the European works council of Vesuvius. The London-based group is a manufacturer of refractory materials for the steel industry with 10,800 employees worldwide, one third of whom work at 17 European sites. The EWC was founded in 2012 under the former company name Cookson Group and has been confronted with site closures on several occasions. The central management and the EWC have had repeated conflicts over the scope of consultation rights.
The legal dispute arose on 16 July 2018 when Vesuvius informed the EWC about the closure of production facilities in Spain, Poland and the UK, in an extraordinary meeting using a simple slideshow presentation. They refused to communicate any further documents. As a consequence, the EWC could neither understand the economic justification for the closures nor obtain any clarity on the financial support offered to dismissed employees. Above all, the central management in London wanted to keep the provisions set aside for possible redundancy costs, secret. The management feared that if this had been disclosed, then employee representatives of the concerned countries could have demanded higher budgets for severance packages. The CAC contradicted this "divide and rule" reasoning and decided that central management had violated the EWC agreement. According to the ruling, the EWC is even entitled to more detailed information than the company's board of directors. However, no sanctions were imposed by the CAC.
The central management had reacted to the start of legal proceedings by giving notice to terminate the EWC agreement on 26 March 2019. The EWC at Vesuvius is to operate under Polish law in the future. On 7 October 2019, central management even broke off the negotiations for a new EWC agreement, as a further disagreement arose. This could lead to a new "default EWC", comparable to the situation in the Austrian company Mayr-Melnhof Packaging.
The second court case for Vesuvius
On 5 September 2019, the closure of two sites in Spain with 130 employees was announced. Central management did not inform the EWC about this because it was allegedly only a local matter in Spain. However, the EWC was able to prove that production would be relocated to Poland and Czechia. As early as 17 May 2019, a seven-day week had been introduced at the Polish plant in Skawina (near Kraków) and subsequently staff numbers had been increased. At an investor conference, the CEO had also referred to these relocations. On 21 January 2020, the CAC decided that Vesuvius had also violated the EWC agreement in this case. Sanctions were not imposed here either.
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1-2020
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