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Two of Europe’s most powerful trade unions have accused European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde of undermining workers’ rights at the Frankfurt institution, escalating a long-running and bitter feud over labour relations.
The latest clash involves changes proposed by the ECB’s leadership to the central bank’s works council, an influential group of elected employees.
Under German law, elected representatives on these Betriebsräte are freed up from their day jobs to focus full-time on representing the interests of staff — while receiving their normal salaries. Legal privileges and protection of works councils have been enshrined in German law for more than a century.
Under the ECB’s proposals, the spokesperson for the works council would only be allowed to dedicate 75 per cent of their time to staff representation. All other members of the council would have to spend 50 per cent of their hours in their normal roles.
Such is the status of these committees in German companies and institutions that unions and works council members are railing against the move, accusing the central bank’s leadership in an internal memo seen by the Financial Times of plotting to “reduce the capacity of the staff representatives to work for the staff”.
The tussle marks a new low-point in a historically fraught relationship between the ECB leadership and worker representatives. Previously this has resulted in public spats and a series of court cases.
Due to its peculiar legal structure as an independent European institution, representatives on the ECB works council already have less favourable terms than those at German companies.
Currently, of the nine ECB employees elected to the council, two members work full time on staff-related matters. Three others dedicate 70-80 per cent of their time to workers’ representation, with the remaining members spending 50 per cent of their time on the body.
The ECB has claimed the changes, which it wants to implement by mid-2026, would be in the interests of all employees. The rules would ensure staff representatives could “pursue their career path and stay closely connected to the ongoing work and public mandate” of the central bank while they also “advocate for staff needs”, the ECB’s head of human resources Eva Murciano said.
She pointed out the bank was proposing other measures, including adding an extra person to the works council to “improve staff representation”.
However, ECB staff representatives have won the backing of two of Europe’s most senior trade union bosses.
Jan Willem Goudriaan, general secretary of Europe’s services sector union EPSU with 8mn members, and Frank Werneke, chair of German union Verdi with 1.9mn members, have separately written to Lagarde, urging her to abandon the proposed changes.
If implemented, they would “significantly restrict the rights of employee representation and the scope for meaningful social dialogue”, warned Werneke in his letter, seen by the FT, adding that workers’ rights at the ECB were already subpar.
“This arrangement would make it impossible to adequately represent workers’ interests,” said EPSU’s Goudriaan in his letter sent to Lagarde in late February.
Peter Krebühl, a Frankfurt-based employment lawyer who has specialised in representing employees in court, told the FT that a professional and effective employee representative must be able to fully focus on that task.
“The ECB seems to have a highly repressive attitude to its internal labour relations,” said Krebühl.
