A comité d'entreprise (or employer's committee) is a legal requirement for all French companies, and company sites with more than fifty staff. The committee is composed of the head of the company, or a representative, and two other management nominees. The rest of the committee is made up of elected staff representatives and nominees from the representative union at the site.
The committee is givenbetween 0.5 and 5% (average 2%) of the company's salary costs. Generally the committee is in charge of organising social events for the workers, such as company picnics or christmas parties. They are also involved in negotiating benefits such as subsidised canteens, employee discounts and discounts with neighbouring businesses. They may also provide services to workers such as vending machines.
The company is also legally obliged to inform the committee of any planned changes to working patterns, conditions and shifts and also of any redundancies. The role of the committee is often limited when it comes to industrial action, especially when several unions are present at the site as usually only the representative union (usually the one with a majority of workers) will have seats on it.
Comments
The Comité d'entreprise is
The Comité d'entreprise is an obligation for companies with 50 and more staff. Not for the others. representatives and nominees don't have to be in a representative union. They even don't need to be in a union.
There is also this things that fucks us up and it is called "délégation unique" which means that the shopstewards are also the staff rep in the Comité. This is not laways the case, often the shopstewards and the staff rep are not the same persons.
I used to be shopsteward ( for the CNT "Vignoles", we are reformist you see) when the company I worked for had less than 50 workers. When I was shopsteward the workers number rose ( not because I was shopsteward) so the bosses had to call for an election for a comité d'entreprise. This was perfect because we were in the middle of this debate within the Confédération. I was not too keen on the whole Comité d'Entreprise ( you do organise more picnics that do syndicalist work and that's the whole purpose of the Comité). We have three work sites ( same city) for the same company. The bosses before the elctions told me that even if I won ( like last time, well ahead of the CGT) I will not be able to stay shopsteward because a) it will be a "délégation unique" which means I could not stay shopsteward without becoming part of this atrocious " cogestion" structure and b) because even if I was ok with that, there was no way we could elect a rep or shopsteward from my worksite!!
I did not even bother. A year letter I slammed the door after going into a fight with my manager...
The story is here to show that today, in france, the comité d'entreprise will be the only place where the future of the workers will be discussed. I understand people who are tempted to join it ( you are not paid though). The CNT in france has decided not to join a structure like that. We are the only union to refuse participating to Comité d'Entreprise.