Information provided for the dialogue

The main emphasis of the dialogue is on meetings where dialogue is carried out orally and direct-ly. 

Well-functioning dialogue requires preparedness

A well-functioning dialogue requires that the parties can also prepare sufficiently for the meetings and the issues addressed in them. For this reason, the employer must provide the employee representative, in writing, with all information relevant for conducting the dialogue successfully, that is, reasonably within the employer’s capacity to provide it, and that the employer has the right to provide it. The relevance depends on the topic to be addressed. In general, it can be said that this obligation applies to information that can be obtained, collected or produced with reasonable efforts and that is required for addressing the topics.

The information must be provided no later than one week before the dialogue

This information must be provided to the employee representative no later than one week before the dialogue, unless agreed otherwise. The employer and the employee representative may agree on a period shorter or longer than a week. No standard format has been defined for the agreement but especially a permanent change should be recorded in writing.

The starting point for providing information is the employer’s own initiative

As a rule, the employer must provide the information required by the dialogue on its own initia-tive.

After receiving the information, the employee representative has the right to ask further questions from the employer and request additional information. The requested additional information must be related to the topic of the dialogue and it must be possible to provide it with reasonable efforts considering the circumstances.

In addition to the workload caused to the employer, the significance of the topic to be addressed and the information requested are taken into consideration.

Data protection and trade secrets may restrict the provision of information

Due to data protection regulations, it may be the case that the employer does not have the right to disclose certain information requested by the employee representative.

Another case in which the requested information does not need to be provided is when the non-disclosure of the information is necessary to protect a trade secret and the employee representative’s confidentiali-ty obligation is not considered a sufficient protection mechanism for this purpose.