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.
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.