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German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

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Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#21

Post by sdoering »

readarticle wrote: post #5

The alternative to the Works Council should have a representation of employees who are not only based in Germany, but also all other countries, including Brazil and the United States I find it hard to believe these councils don’t have the ability to account for international employees, is this a specifically “outside the EU” issue since the examples given are in the Americas, and not any of the neighboring countries…

Actually they could include non German employees in their works agreements. But none the less these binding agreements are, as far as I am aware, only binding for German work contracts. So even if these protections were written down, that wouldn't protect the international colleagues.as long as they are not employed in a German legal entity.

Our works council for example isn't able to represent our Czech colleagues.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#22

Post by klausa »

Maxbunny wrote: post #15

Overall pretty exaggerated. N26 is against a worker's council, but they are not preventing the employees to form one, and will accept their decision.

You and I must have different definitions of "preventing someone from doing something", if yours doesn't include filing for injunctions.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#23

Post by tomthe »

Maxbunny wrote: post #15

Overall pretty exaggerated. N26 is against a worker's council, but they are not preventing the employees to form one, and will accept their decision.

Obviously they try to prevent the formation of a worker's council as much as possible. If they did anything more, managers would face jail, as it is punished quite hard to prevent the formation of a worker's council in Germany.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#24

Post by ragebol »

admg wrote: post #13
arianvanp wrote: post #3

At least here in NL the Works Council is mandatory _By law_ if you have more than 50 employees. I suppose the laws in Germany are similar. and I also suppose N26 has more than 50 employeees ;) A healthy organization should have one, in my opinion. Management being against it is an unhealthy sign. Just so you have some context. a Works Council has the following rights: Right to discuss: they will have a bi-yearly meet…

That's fascinating. I can see both the positives of it and the downsides. I recently (around two years ago) worked for a startup which grew too quickly and made some really bad hiring decisions which left them with a lot of loud, disgruntled employees - these works council right's would've crippled the company instead of just setting it back a few years. On the other side I've worked for a larger financial services c…

In short: if you have bad people in your organisation and they can make decisions, that might be bad for the organisation. So hire good people.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#25

Post by coldtea »

dtech wrote: post #7
arianvanp wrote: post #3

At least here in NL the Works Council is mandatory _By law_ if you have more than 50 employees. I suppose the laws in Germany are similar. and I also suppose N26 has more than 50 employeees ;) A healthy organization should have one, in my opinion. Management being against it is an unhealthy sign. Just so you have some context. a Works Council has the following rights: Right to discuss: they will have a bi-yearly meet…

Regarding the last point, the Netherlands is very different from the US, especially at-will employment states. Once you give an employee a permanent contract, you cannot fire them except for a set of reasons defined by law. Most interestingly compared to US, if you need to lay off people you need to lay of your employees in order of most junior to most senior (seniority in terms of time they have been with the compan…

>Once you give an employee a permanent contract, you cannot fire them except for a set of reasons defined by law.

Americans be like: "Shock! Awe! How would anyone ever hire an employee under such a requirement?!"

(Meanwhile Netherlands unemployed rate is ~ 4.3%, and the US one at ~10 - and the latter with lots of under-reporting, e.g. people giving up looking for a job, and so on).

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#26

Post by denzil_correa »

onli wrote: post #17
denzil_correa wrote: post #10

> N26 has filed another restraining order to prevent today's Electoral Board Selection for N26 GmbH, this time against the union ver.di. As such, IG Metall has stepped in to chair today's meeting. It will take place at the same venue, with the time delayed so people can make it. https://twitter.com/worker291/status/1294183659583369216?s=2...

That's beyond stupid. It's fintech. Always on the brink of being regulated to death, a highly sensitive area. They need every inch of goodwill from politics and the public they can get. Fighting against worker unionization is already highly unpopular in Germany and will cost them a bunch of customers, and will cause them to lose political favor. Now adding ver.di (one of the strongest unions) to their enemies, what a…

https://twitter.com/worker291/status/1294210928234373120?s=2....

> UPDATE: Someone has called the police to check the safety measures of the meeting. They found no issue and have left the premises.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#27

Post by klausa »

arrrg wrote: post #12
arianvanp wrote: post #3

At least here in NL the Works Council is mandatory _By law_ if you have more than 50 employees. I suppose the laws in Germany are similar. and I also suppose N26 has more than 50 employeees ;) A healthy organization should have one, in my opinion. Management being against it is an unhealthy sign. Just so you have some context. a Works Council has the following rights: Right to discuss: they will have a bi-yearly meet…

Worker Councils seem to have broadly similar but slightly different rights and responsibilities in Germany. They are never mandatory, however employees do have the right to form one if there are at least five employees who are eligible to vote (18+) and if at least three of those can be elected (>6 months with the company, broadly speaking no one in an important management role). At least three employees have to take…

>That doesn’t really change that I’m currently still too scared to actually form one at the company I work for, even though I would very much like for it to exist. It still feels like painting a target on your back, even though Germany does not have at-will employment and you certainly cannot be fired or blocked or even just so much as reprimanded for wanting a form a Worker Council.

If there's one good thing that's gonna come out of the idiotic attempts by the N26 management to stop this, I hope it's bringing more awareness to the fact that "Betriebsräte" are even a thing that exists.

Second step is getting help in actually creating one, and I'm hoping that ver.di (and other unions! IG Metall has been active in this space recently too.) will step up and provide guidance and support for this.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#28

Post by sdoering »

klausa wrote: post #19
atypeoferror wrote: post #16

> N26's co-founders Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal have argued for an alternative, saying they believe the traditional German works council excludes international employees This is patently false. I work at a medium-sized startup in Berlin, which is very international, with many of my colleagues speaking little German. We have recently created a Works Council (with support from the management) - and the coun…

I think they meant "international employees" as in "employees of non-german N26 Subsidiaries", not "non-german speaking employees of german-N26 entities". Which, of course, is also a laughably bad argument, since there's nothing that prevents N26 from voluntarily granting those employees similar protections they'd enjoy if they were employed in Germany.

Exactly that. Our works council is doing everything bilingual. for our none native speakers. None the less it isn't allowed to represent the colleagues from the office in the Czech Republic as they are employed by a Czech subsidiary. A company could theoretically offer the same protections/conditions voluntarily. but the works council can't enforce that.

Re: German digital bank N26 is facing outcry from its staff over management

#30

Post by BrendanCoughlan »

eulenteufel wrote: post #8
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

If a startup refuses a worker’s council this way and someone already tries to establish it, that’s a good sign to look for employment somewhere else.

In the article the N26 management is quoted: "The alternative to the Works Council should have a representation of employees who are not only based in Germany, but also all other countries, including Brazil and the United States" and "That said, if the N26 team feels that they want to organize the feedback culture in Germany differently via a works council, N26 will of course respect and support this, as well as any…

German media quotes from a leaked internal E-Mail with different language (in German of course): https://financefwd.com/de/n26-wahlen/

My translation of the relevant paragraphs:

The elected body stood "against almost all values we believe in at N26", it [the e-mail] says. And: "Drive: It makes us slower. Simplicity: It makes our cooperation more compley and hirarchical. Integrity: It undermines a culture of trust and could lead to a hightend level of confrontation. Excellence: It is not an up-to-date instrument of employee mangment and limits personal career development and influence."

Morover, according to the e-mails argumentation, a work council would lead to a two-class society for employees, because it is responsible only for German employees. A world-wide "Employee Representation Board" is named as an alternative proposal.

Back to me: Proposing a not-legally-a-work-council is a standard trick of German union busters. The real point is, of course, that the alternative board doesn't have the rights and protections of a real one. Also, looking at their Kununu reviews (I think that is a cultural equivalent of Glassdoor, though the focus is more on soft factors than money) they actually seem like the kind of work-place one would urgently want to found a work council at. So nah, not much chance of that being at all about genuine care for non-German employees.

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