For our 2012 EU Parliament study on Employee participation in the European Union, we published best practice case studies on both companies and countries. Here you find the full version of our best practice case study on Voestalpine, one of the worlds largest steel producers. Voestalpine became partially owned by its employees after the privatization in the year 2000.  -we would be happy to hear your thoughts on this case study.

Introduction

Voestalpine AG—headquartered in Linz (Austria)—is mainly active in the production and treatment of steel. As a successful international corporate group with some 300 production and sales companies in more than 60 countries, it has nearly 40,000 employees (fewer than half of them in Austria). In conjunction with discussions about the full privatisation of the corporate group undertaken at the beginning of 2000, the group’s Board of Management together with the employee representatives developed and later implemented an employee participation scheme, which at that time was unprecedented in Austria. Through this, a large portion of the group’s workforce as well as a small group of ex-employees currently hold a 13.3 per cent stake (around 22 million shares) administrated by a private foundation (Voestalpine Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung).

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