The Future of Corporate Co-Determination

The purpose of co-determination at the workplace is to protect employees by involving elected employee representatives in decisions relevant to the operation and in shaping the working environment. The starting point and core of co-determination in the workplace is the operation itself. What constitutes an operation in terms of works constitution law is not clearly defined. The new developments in the world of work, especially the shift towards more mobile work, reduce the importance of the traditional workplace and thus make it more difficult to determine whether or not an operation exists and where its boundaries lie. However, even with exclusively mobile work, this can be identified based on the case law of the Federal Labor Court. For employers, assigning individual employees to a specific operation can still be difficult. This article provides guidance for this.