Sense out of uncertainty, HR without borders
Welcome to the World’s leading organisation for multinational employers.
Blue chip employers belong to FedEE because we provide the kind of fast, practical, affordable, high quality and far-sighted service that gives successful HR professionals the special edge they require to stay ahead of the game. An illustration of this is the fact that we have predicted not only 9/11, the 2007/8 meltdown, the Brexit result, the pandemic (six months before it happened) – as well as the latest surge of hyperinflation, back in May 2020. One FedEE Member put it this way.
“I do not have the time to brief outsiders and start worrying about professional fees before I can get a job done. I just need someone I can trust who will give me an honest second opinion and help me sort things out so that I can move onto other things. My company cannot carry all the expertise about international HR laws and practices it needs in-house – so the next best thing is FedEE. You have no equal and those who do not know about you do not know what they are missing.”
Above all, we are politically neutral and independently funded by our Members – with no financial support from governments, quangos or pressure groups. We also receive no revenue from advertisers or sponsors.
〠 Join our top Multinationals: We are Chaired by the Ford Motor Company, whilst Latham and Watkins – the world’s second largest law firm – is on our board. In fact, 40% of the top global companies are FedEE corporate members.
〠 Legal Counsel: FedEE Members have access to our legal knowledgebase, helpline and customised legal services.
〠 Monitoring Global Developments: We track laws, legal cases, HR practices and key developments in a timely and practical way.
〠 Membership of FedEE is corporate: with member organisations free to nominate multiple, individual users anywhere – apart from Afghanistan, Belarus, DRC, Iran, Haiti, Myanmar, Nicaragua, N Korea, Russia, Serbia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
〠 Have you amended your organisation’s employment contracts to comply with the EU Directives on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions and Work-Life Balance? We have developed a template to assist you to incorporate the principal contractual changes. Do not delay in achieving compliance – the changes were due in early August 2022.
International HR Answers in Seconds
FedEE was developed to provide a “right hand” professional support service to those in multinational HR departments.
We focus on key developments so you can get on with your core day-to-day activities. You do not need a legal database containing 1000s of new laws and court cases to read every day, nor do you have the time to wait for a call-back from a law firm – but you do need to know if your company faces a new employer obligation in a particular country, if a key deadline is coming up on the radar, or how to resolve a difficult employee problem in real-time.
FedEE also produces news reports you would never receive from any other source. This is partly because we monitor changes in over 30 languages. We also have a tiered support system so that if you need to know more, you may go to our online knowledgebase, or simply call our multinational helpline. 85% of helpline enquiries are resolved within two hours, after just one direct call to an Advisor. Our service is also multi-user – so several colleagues may access it in their own right. Few lawyers have hands on HR experience and so their guidance is often rigid, obscure and off the mark. We go beyond the law and aim at finding practical, management solutions that stick and make good economic sense.
You could probably secure a near alternative to FedEE by hiring a talented HR professional with years of working in many jurisdictions and industry sectors, then by arming them with numerous costly online legal database subscriptions – or you could simply sign up to FedEE at fraction of the cost. That is perhaps why many HR departments around the World have relied on FedEE for over three decades.
Examples of Issues We Review:
☞ A recent landmark court decision in Malaysia has been the first to challenge the country’s Islamic laws concerning sexual orientation.
☞ We chart the phasing out of COVID-19 lockdowns as they happen. Our expertise in Epidemiology allows us to track and evaluate emerging threats.
☞ How many US States now ban the use of non-compete clauses and which is the latest?
☞ Are casual workers unlawful in Australia? We show you why not.
☞ What are the latest changes to Singapore’s Child Development Co-Savings Act? What do they mean?
☞ What has happened to the legal loophole in Belgium that allowed employers to hire workers on a succession of alternating temporary and replacement contracts?
☞ May an employer in Kenya dismiss an employee serving a probationary period “at will”?
☞ What are the HR data retention periods around the World?
☞ Which multinational companies are leading the way in introducing new-style work practices?
The FedEE Story
FedEE was supported initially by the European Commission.
FedEE Services
FedEE offers a range of “must have” services to the Multinational employers.
FedEE Achievements
Some achievements since foundation in 1988.
Aftermath
FedEE’s frightening analysis concerning prospects for a post-pandemic World.
Services Tailored for You
Your Employment Law Questions Answered – Practically and Fast
If a quick check of the FedEE Knowledgebase does not come up with all the details you are looking for then the FedEE legal helpline is just a phone call, or email message, away. We seek to answer all email questions raised within four working hours. In fact, over 90% of telephone enquiries about our core 35 countries are resolved during a 15-minute call.
Updating Your HR Policies to Comply with Statutes and Rulings
The most constant concern that arises in our periodic member surveys concerns the updating of HR policies. If a policy is out of date, and thus at variance with the law, or phrased in an ambiguous way a company can find itself being challenged by employees with whom they are in dispute, an ex-employee or a factory inspector. All policies should therefore ideally be reviewed on an annual basis. FedEE offers a policy review service that could be just for one policy in a single jurisdiction, a complete handbook or for multiple countries. This service is at a fraction of the cost charged by a conventional law firm.
Let FedEE-Legal provide you with the employment law assistance you need during the current crisis
FedEE Legal are Legal Counsel to the Federation. We offer expert advice, information and support at less cost and much faster than an old-style legal firm. Our expertise is also based on a depth of international HR experience and is led by a former Advisor to The European Commission and the ICO who also has a track record in mining, electronics and engineering. We cover over 120+ country jurisdictions, plus federal laws, from a single international centre. For statutory reasons FedEE Legal is not open to non-members of the Federation. Call us today on (+44) 203 807 9205 or email enquiries@fedee.com.
Ask FedEE Legal’s research team to undertake an investigation into a difficult legal challenge, or brief you on a particular jurisdiction
We have undertaken numerous customised research exercises for major public and private organisations to assess, for instance, the best jurisdiction and labour market for expansion into Eastern Europe, restructure the business, convert independent advisors into permanent employees, or set out all the steps necessary for a major transfer of undertakings. We specialise in M&A HR legal strategy – and in 2019 we were a key player in one of the largest mergers in recent times.
Becoming a multinational for the first time? Let FedEE help reduce the delays and risks
Membership of FedEE will be an invaluable aid to successful growth in other countries. Not only can we show you how to avoid the legal pitfalls, but can put you in touch with local service providers and provide statistics to help you assess things like the size and nature of local labour markets.
OPINION: FedEE Secretary-General
The European Parliament has just approved a measure that seeks to promote collective bargaining and introduce a minimum wage, where it does not exist.
In the first respect, the Draft Directive states that collective bargaining should be strengthened where less than 80% of a national workforce have their pay determined in that way. Moreover, where collective bargaining does not reach the 80% cover rate Member States will have an obligation to establish an action plan to increase the percentage of workers subject to collective agreements.
Secondly, although it will be up to individual Member States to establish and maintain their own minimum wage systems, the actual level of the wage should not be less than 50% of the average gross wage or 60% of the median wage.
Council approval is now likely this Autumn – with Member States obliged to implement the Directive within two years.
Comment: It remains curious that although Article 153 (5) of the EU Treaty specifically excludes regulatory competences in the field of “pay”, all EU institutions have moved ahead regardless with this measure. This is because it is believed that the measure does not actually set a specific figure for the minimum wage in each State. FedEE has arranged parliamentary questions about this area of “ultra vires”, directly lobbied every MEP individually – putting before them details of the treaty exclusion – and the EU Parliament has even briefed itself about its own limitations. However, there remains an unquestioning belief that it is OK to persist this far because the EU is not actually interfering in the freedom to choose between setting minimum wages by law or promoting protection through collective agreements. In both respects it clearly is – and no twisted form of words will obviate that fact. The enemies of the law are the legislators themselves.
The hidden truth of collective bargaining outside the single enterprise
The implicit faith by the European Institutions in collective bargaining is primarily based on the “French model” of multicompany sectoral agreements. In reality, this approach to wage setting is highly damaging to the economy because it is is essentially anti-trust and anticompetitive – involving collusion between a small number of enterprises to set rates that are often prohibitive to market entrants. The fact that the national government then steps in to make the rates generally applicable across the sector thus compounds the effectiveness of the damaging wage cartels. In this process the often highly unrepresentative unions involved can take credit for outcomes they have largely just been a spectator to – as the minimum cost of labour is fixed aross the table before them by competitors, using the unions’ presence as “proof” of legitimacy for the process. The fact that the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers cannot see this betrays their naivety and gross incompetence.
Press Releases and Newswires
White papers
FedEE Member companies gain access to a wealth of information and guidance.
Press Releases
Examples of past press releases distributed to media, newspapers and agencies.
Past Newswires
Examples of our fortnightly newswires sent to all FedEE Member organizations.
Join FedEE Today
Many of the world’s largest multinational companies already belong to The Federation of International Employers (FedEE®). We have a Worldwide Membership – with particular concentrations in North America, Western Europe, India and Japan. We were founded in 1988 and are regularly voted by our Members as an organisation they would recommend to other multinationals.
If your company has over 150 employees in two or more countries, has its own in-house HR department, and has been operating for two or more years then you really cannot afford to operate without being part of the Federation. The approval process takes less than a day and for immediate access to our services we have an online credit card payment facility. Membership costs as little as €998.00 a year. Please check here to view the table of our membership services. Sign up now.
Why not take a short tour of our knowledge-base before joining FedEE® to see the nature and extent of the employment law, HR data and support that we offer? Please contact our Membership Secretary on membershipservices@fedee.com to arrange for a one-to-one webinar for you and your colleagues, arranged without obligation and entirely at your own convenience.
Contact Us
Address, email, telephone numbers and on line payments so you can get in touch from anywhere around the world.
Senior Management Team
Introducing our key staff and Board Members.
Training and Events
The World’s advanced professional transnational law training course.
Clear Thinking
Most people are not taught to think and few realize that clear thinking originates in perceptions and personal identity.
COMMENT: This is not recovery, but oncoming recession
For the past two and a half years FedEE has been predicting a major economic downturn once the post-pandemic bounceback “health honeymoon” period has ended. The fall will now be further intensified by the Ukraine war.
What recession means is that GDP and stocks fall heavily and hyperinflation sets in. US GDP fell in both Q1 and Q2 2022, CPI has climbed into double figures and stock prices are highly volatile. Now a recession is already happening in the USA, a global recession is likely to follow.
Driving the recession is the economic irresponsibility of major governments around the World, that printed money in vast quantities as GDP levels fell. The dilution of the US dollar has been particularly spectacular – with M3 growing by over 40% since February 2020.
The only major economy that has remained relatively well-managed during the pandemic has been Japan. However, Japan’s GDP fell by 0.4% in Q1 2022 and the yen-dollar exchange rate remains very weak (and getting weaker) – making the yen substantially below its true value.
THERE IS A NEED TO MOVE NOW TO AVERT THE COMING CRISIS
It was just a matter of time for quantitative easing (overprinting of paper money) to transpose into rapidly rising levels of inflation. The impact of falling consumer confidence is affecting demand and the Ukraine war has lifted energy and food prices to a point where falling living standards are leading to a price-wage spiral.
State central banks are already using sharp rises in interest rates to make the recession bite – hoping that only a controlled collapse will curb inflation. However, unless they buy back the inflated currency stocks they issued in 2020/21 this move will backfire badly.
in Europe, governments are reacting – not by the sensible course of containing spending, being austere and riding out the storm, but by throwing large amounts of public spending at subsidies, with the UK planning to borrow heavily on the prospect of a future prosperity it may never enjoy and Greece is already devoting 3.7% of its faltering GDP on support measures (the highest in Europe).