If you spot Patrick Cunnane drinking coffee at a bar in Amsterdam it will probably be spring-time and the chairman of the Reed-Elsevier works council will be relaxing after a round of meetings with his continental colleagues.  The pounds 9bn Anglo-Dutch publishing group has operations in 10 countries across Europe that qualify for works council representation and when staff reps meet - one of two meetings a year - the sessions can be intensive and exhausting.  In addition to the coffee, he admits, there is a chance he might even accept an invitation to a local hostelry for a glass of slow brewed Dutch beer to prepare for the second day's action, when Reed's director of personnel - a Frenchman - explains what the company is up to and takes questions from delegates.  But even though the trips are not all hard work and involve two days away from his job as features editor of transport magazine Commercial Motor, he rejects claims by employer organisations that works councils are a cover for junkets on the company tab.  He says Reed, which has huge investments in internet publishing plus its business magazines and science publishing divisions, benefits from the dialogue as much as the workers. He believes relations will improve even further when an EU directive, published in March, takes effect in the UK in three years. At that point, every employer with more than 150 staff will need to establish a works council. By 2008, all employers with 50 or more staff will need to organise one. Currently UK workers only get involved in works councils if their employer has operations in other EU countries.  The seismic shift in industrial relations is potentially huge. The new rules and the potential implications are highlighted in a booklet published by the Industrial Relations Service*. The authors argue: "Once the directive is implemented into British law, businesses employing three-quarters of all UK employees will for the first time be faced with statutory requirements for ongoing information and consultation on a range of business and employment matters. The impact is likely to be massive. No other EU legislation on collective aspects of employ ment has had the potential to affect such a wide range of employers and employees, or such a wide range of everyday workplace issues."  The scope of the directive might have been wider and been implemented sooner had the the government not lobbied to water down the rules. In the rest of the EU the directive applies to all business with 20 or more employees and across the board from 2005.  Government lobbying was strongly supported by employer groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, which believe works councils will have the power to prevent businesses from moving swiftly, whether it is to shut offices and factories or open new ones.  Jonathan Cridland, the deputy director of the CBI said after the European parliament passed the directive: "Businesses have to implement decisions quickly and these changes would throw a monkey-wrench into the works. We believe in proper consultation but these proposals are a recipe for grind ing business decisions to a halt."  Proper consultation is, at present, a largely voluntary process. A firm must give unions 90 days' notice when it makes 10 or more people redundant. Usually the consultation is a sham and the cuts go ahead anyway. Pretty much everything else the company does can be carried out behind closed doors - and usually is, unless the union has forced the door open. A merger with another company or shifting production from one country to an other are decisions that have traditionally been the preserve of company directors.  Under the new directive, employers will be forced to consult on any proposed changes in working conditions or anything that might constitute a threat to employment and to provide information about "the recent and probable development of the (business) or the establishment's activities and economic situation".  Peter Booth, a union official at the Transport and General Workers Union, believes the CBI is out of touch with many employers, especially multinationals, which are beginning to embrace the proposals. He points to firms such as General Motors and Italian tyre maker Pirelli as companies ready to move forward now. Two years ago it was GM that allowed factory workers at its Vauxhall plant in Luton to find out about its closure over the radio. Mr Booth says the company has now agreed to a moratorium on closures and to discuss all future moves with the works council.  Jane Wills, a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London has attended the meetings of several works councils as part of a government funded project to examine the implications for industrial relations in the UK. She acknowledges that reps are given more information about the company's strategy and attitude to employees than ever before, but she believes the lack of a dialogue between workers and managers in the UK has seriously undermined their work.  "Delegates now have a better sense of the company and how it works. But there was no genuine consultation going on. Consultation means getting involved in decisions before they are made. What I saw was still management led, organised by the personnel department and in one case involved the management giving a very slick presentation much like they would to City analysts."  Even within this limited forum, she says UK reps shrank in their seats while they watched the German and French delegates blossom. She says continental delegates would turn up accompanied by experts in employment law or negotiating tactics and would prepare their delegates for the question and answer session with directors.  She believes that unless UK employers take on the responsibility for training their works council reps in time for 2005, the reps will be steamrollered much as the EU reps are at the moment. Unless they drop their opposition to the directive, training funded by the company seems remote.  Trade unions will also be called on to extend the support on offer to EU works council reps to all UK reps, which Mr Booth admits will stretch the unions' resources.  Mr Cunnane, who is also a local union official, says next month the Reed works council will be pressing its UK management to establish a network of works councils in Britain ahead of the 2005 deadline. He is heavily involved in discussions over the fate of workers who have joined Reed as part of a pounds 4bn acquisition. That's at a European level. With a network of UK works councils he would have even more support for his plans to make sure the new staff are included in discussions about their future.  Like his EU counterparts he has been given a separate office in the building where he conducts works council business. He has also re quested secretarial support when the works council meets in the UK and got it.  "It's early days for us. The European works council has only been going since 1999. But already we believe the council is a useful channel for information and consultation on the future direction of the company," he says.  He remains enthusiastic about the potential for co-operation rather than a reawakening of the "them and us" that employers have highlighted. The Trades Union Congress is hopeful that most works councils will be established through local agreement rather than through legal disputes in the courts. But that depends largely on how prescribed the legislation becomes when the government decides to interpret the directive and turn it into UK law.  *Works Councils For the UK? is published by the Industrial Relations Service. Tel: 020-7354-6742. Classification Language: ENGLISH Subject: EUROPEAN UNION REGULATION & POLICY (89%); EUROPEAN UNION (89%); EUROPEAN UNION INSTITUTIONS (89%); EUROPEAN UNION LAW (89%); BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS (89%); ASSOCIATIONS & ORGANIZATIONS (78%); TALKS & MEETINGS (77%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (77%); WRITERS (77%); MANUFACTURING FACILITIES (77%); LEGISLATION (66%) Company: REED ELSEVIER GROUP PLC (58%); RELX GROUP PLC (58%); REED ELSEVIER GROUP PLC (58%); RELX GROUP PLC (58%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%) Organization: EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%); EUROPEAN UNION (84%) Ticker: RUK (NYSE) (92%); REN (AMS) (92%); REL (LSE) (92%); RDE (FRA) (92%); ENL (NYSE) (92%); ELV (FRA) (92%); RUK (NYSE) (92%); REN (AMS) (92%); REL (LSE) (92%); RDE (FRA) (92%); ENL (NYSE) (92%); ELV (FRA) (92%) Industry: PUBLISHING (90%); BEER & ALE (78%); MAGAZINE PUBLISHING (77%); WRITERS (77%); MANUFACTURING FACILITIES (77%); ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING (72%) Geographic: AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (94%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (94%); EUROPE (92%); NETHERLANDS (79%)