TL;DR: It's a non-union form of worker representation with separate legal status in countries like France and Germany. While not unions, their existence isn't incompatible with unionization.
Do these work councils actually work? What incentive do they have to side with an employee over the company? Wouldn't it be the first aim of the HR department to get as cosy with them as possible?
Works councils represent the interests of the employees and work very well in my experience. AFAIK companies with strong workers representation do a lot better than those without. Council members are elected on a yearly basis. By law they cannot be dismissed and they get a say in topics concerning workers rights. Want to introduce a software benchmarking workers performance? Good luck getting it approved by the council. They are also present during job interviews to ensure applicants are treated fairly and equally. They make sure your job stays family friendly and healthy. There are actually often council members in HR questioning managers why their employees work overtime.
IME a (good) works council can smoothen out a lot of misunderstandings between management and employees before they blow up into real problems, especially when it comes to the legal side of things. You can think of the works council as the counter-weight to HR (e.g. HR keeps employees in check while a works council keeps management in check).
Yes. They work. They decide on new hires. On many other things. By law they have a lot of rights. Disclaimer: I am an elected member of the Red Hat Germany works council.
That honestly does NOT reassure me. I'm getting flashbacks to being chosen last during football practice. While I can convince tech leads of my skills, I have never been a very popular guy and when it comes to being judged by a crowd, I fear they will pick the guy who is more handsome, taller, or Biodeutsch, or who has a more „sympathisch“ profile.
They have no powers to make any subjective judgements about hiring. They can only object to a hiring if the company has contradicted the law or it's own policies.
For instance if the company makes a team of Android developers redundant on Monday and then hires an external Android developer on Tuesday, the Works Council would want to know a very good reason why one of the potential internal candidates was not selected instead.
I guess a company could ask their opinion if they wanted to, but they are not legally compelled to do so. In my experience no-one from the works council is physically present in interviews either. They are just informed afterwards that a hiring decision is made and they have to approve or reject it.
It's fair to say that it depends a lot on the people on the works council. A good works council is superb, a mediocre council just says yes to everything the company leaders want, and a bad one can make life very annoying for employees and the company itself.
As someone working in Germany, that seems unlikely to me. A works council influenced by the company would like be struck down quickly, senior/mid management (e.g. directors and up) are even disallowed to participate/be elected as far as I know.
Its more likely to me that they use that copyright as they are an official and legal part of the company as works council.
Works councils are legally recognized parts of their companies and generally use company branding, besides of course using the company offices, work hours and infrastructure to conduct their legally-protected business.
Its creation can be forced by a vote of the employees and the council has a legal special status. This probably comes as a reaction to multiple distribution centers around Germany doing exactly that and forcing the creation of local work councils with the help of unions.
It's a common thing in German companies of all sizes and usually a good thing for the company too because problems between management and workforce are usually solved in a much less "confrontational" way compared to full-blown unionization (especially in smaller family-owned "Mittelstand" businesses).
Unions and Works Councils are not mutually exclusive. All companies that have a recognized Union will have a Works Council too.
A Works Council is entirely company specific. A Union is usually concerned with an entire sector and deals with company-specific issues only a limited way. In practice the Union organisations often provide assistance and advice to a Works Council, even to companies in which they are not active as a Union.