Lhe law relating to the growth and transformation of businesses of May 22, 2019 (known as the “Pacte law”) has relaunched discussions around employee representation within the management boards of large companies.
From now on, in companies employing at least a thousand employees in France (or at least five thousand employees when the company has subsidiaries abroad), management boards made up of more than eight directors (compared to twelve previously) must include at least two employee representatives.
Through this measure, the legislator’s objective is to increase employee participation in strategic decisions and to promote diversity of points of view within management boards.
The French Institute of Administrators has just published a guide presenting employee administrators (AS) as a “fruitful reality” and highlighting their “ability to integrate into the work of the board and enrich it with the internal vision they bring”. Their in-depth knowledge of the history and operational functioning of the company would allow them to contribute usefully to strategic decision-making.
If the relevance of their presence within boards is today widely recognized, the study of the sociological mechanisms at work in this system nevertheless leads to nuance the fantasies around an ideal corporate democracy. A series of interviews carried out with employee administrators of large French companies allows us to reveal the difficulties they face, to the point of harming the proper functioning of the system, and ultimately its capacity to truly transform corporate governance.
Break with the union field
First of all, joining the board of directors of large companies represents a high entry cost for ASs. They must in fact acquire a new language: “managerial” language, imbued with economic, financial and strategic data that most of them do not master. Added to this is sometimes the use of English in reports and meetings, which reinforces these difficulties. The number of hours of training provided for by the Pacte law (minimum of forty hours per year) only allows, to use the words of one of the people interviewed, “to have fewer gaps in one’s ignorance”.
This entry cost is also linked to the break with the union field, which is imposed on them under French law. Indeed, contrary to the regulations of other countries such as Germany, Spain or Italy, the mandate of employee administrator is in France incompatible with other mandates of employee representation, such as those of union delegate or member of the social and economic committee (article L225-30 of the commercial code).
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