2025 and Onward: Tech Works Councils are Here to Stay!

A conference for works council members
April 11, 2025 | 9:00 am to 6:30 pm | Berlin

Once more, the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition together with IG Metall and ver.di are inviting works council members from Tech workplaces in Berlin and beyond to the Berlin Tech Workers Conference. After the success of the first two Berlin Tech Workers Conferences in September 2022 and October 2023, it was about time to invite woco members to the third conference in order to meet the new faces of the latest newly elected Tech woco members, to learn about recent trends and challenges and to foster the bonds between the different councils, the TWC, ver.di and the IG Metall. So, again there will be plenty to talk about and to learn from each other when we reconvene on April 11, 2025. Just like in the first two conferences, we will focus on the specific challenges Tech works council members are facing in their day-to-day practice of representing mainly English-speaking staff from around the world – challenges heightened by the fact that the workers they represent rely on virtual meetings and digital infrastructure even more heavily than workers in other sectors.

Schedule:

09:00 am Check-in

09:30 am Conference opening and welcome, introduction, keynote
10:00 am Parallel roundtables on current workplace issues, identification of common issues, exchange of experiences, best practices

12:00 pm Lunch break

01:00 pm  AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS, PHASE 1

• Workshop 1: Are »Performance Improvement Plans« (PiPs) even a thing in Germany? What are the employment law regulations and what is the role of the woco?
• Workshop 2: Unions and works councils, what’s the difference? Legal framework for collaboration, union rights of works council members
• Workshop 3: ESOPs, VSOPs and the role of the woco: What to do with employer offers stock options?

02:30 pm Coffee break

03:00 PM AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS, PHASE 2

• Workshop 4:»Return to Office« and the woco: Works agreements on mobile work, Recent developments in jurisdiction
• Workshop 5: The works council’s role in workplace downsizing scenarios (mass layoffs)
• Workshop 6: Codetermination on remuneration: What are the woco’s rights and what differences are there between the unions’ collective agreements and works agreements?

04:30 pm Coffee break

05:00 pm Closing panel on workplace discrimination,the Gender Pay Gap and workers’ counter strategies

18:30 pm Reflection phase, next steps, end of conference

19:30 pm Get-together