ELA International Committee Report 2008

It has been a busy year for the ELA International Committee. The members of the Committee felt that international employment law issues were becoming part of every employment lawyer’s daily life and that we therefore needed to provide members with greater access to international employment law training and networking opportunities.

We therefore agreed last year to adopt two key objectives for the International Committee going forward (and to implement specific initiatives to achieve those objectives):

(a) To develop a structured programme of international employment law training sessions for our members; and

(b) to build on the profile and influence of ELA abroad.

(a) Developing a structured programme of international employment law training sessions for our members

We kicked off the year with a one day international training session covering a variety of topics from merging European Works Councils; international tax and social security issues; implementing global policies; and enforcing restrictive covenants abroad.

Since then, we have devised a quarterly training programme with sessions developed and chaired by members of the Committee, bringing in expert speakers on topics such as employment issues in international transactions; international employment contracts, tax and social security issues; termination of employment and negotiated severances in France, Germany and Italy (to be held on 30 April 2008) and global data privacy issues (to be held in June 2008).

We were fortunate to have some superb overseas speakers join us for those sessions.

The attendance and interaction in all of those training sessions exceeded our expectations, suggesting to the members of the Committee that there really is a genuine interest and enthusiasm amongst the ELA membership to develop a solid knowledge base in international employment law issues. We are currently working on the 2009 programme and will be releasing details on the International Committee webpage in the next couple of months.

(b) Building on the profile and influence of ELA abroad.

We have also taken active steps to develop the profile and influence of ELA abroad.

Members of the committee visited the European Commission, to gain insight into the Commission’s current thinking and agenda on employment law issues. The visit afforded ELA a voice with the Commission with regard to proposed legislative changes and an opportunity to provide feedback and offer support to the Commission. A report of that visit will be published in ELA Briefing shortly.

We helped raise the profile of ELA abroad by hosting two drinks parties for leading international employment lawyer groups: for members of the American Bar Association International Section Employment Committee, and of the International Bar Association Employment & Industrial Relations Committee. Both events were well attended and gave ELA members opportunities to network with leading employment lawyers from around the world, without having to leave the UK.

Finally, we are planning initial discussions with employment lawyer associations overseas, including in the US, Europe and beyond, to discuss the opportunity of establishing closer links with each other This should allow greater exchange of know how and experience, potential access to membership in each others’ associations, and more networking opportunities for members of ELA and those other associations. We will keep you posted as and when those discussions take shape.

All of these initiatives take time and effort. A tremendous amount of work has been done by the International Committee members to bring them to fruition, for which I am very grateful. We are delighted to have been able to welcome a number of new members to the Committee over the last year to help drive these initiatives forward and develop ideas for future events.

If you are interested and involved in in