infonet-economy

In establishments with a works council and 200 and more employees, the Works Council Act
requires the paid leave of absence of one works councillor, subjected to collective bargaining
and works agreements. This paper analyses the de-facto distribution of this legal provision and
shows that the paid leave of absence do not sharply increases at the legal threshold of 200
employees. Instead of a step function, we observe a continuous increase of the probability
of paid leave of absence with the number of employees. In particular, a lot of establishments
have a works councillor in paid leave of absence before the legal threshold and a lot of establishments
have no-one far behind the threshold. Contrary, the probability of paid leave of absence
for one works councillor sharply increases at the legal threshold for establishments with
bad relations between management and works council.