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.