An HR manager or director implementing the textile passport will sooner or later encounter the question of whether the works council must be involved in this process. The short answer: that does not depend on the textile passport itself, but on what the software around it does and how it affects the work of your employees.
The Works Council Act grants approval rights for systems that collect, process or use data about workers to monitor their performance. The textile passport is fundamentally about product data: fibre composition, origin, care instructions, repair information. As soon as the software you choose for this processes only product data and registers nothing about the work of individual employees, approval rights are not obvious. This picture changes as soon as the same system also keeps track of who entered which data, how quickly that happened or with what error margin — that soon touches on monitoring performance, and works councils view that differently.
What the law distinguishes
The legislator distinguishes between systems that are about the product or the process, and systems that say something about the employee working with them. A software package that only collects fibre data from suppliers and converts it into a passport generally falls into the first category. As soon as reports are produced such as 'employee X filled in 40 passports this week, averaging 3 minutes per item', the conversation shifts. Not because the law explicitly addresses this with respect to textile passports — that regulation is about the product — but because works council legislation looks at the function of the system, not the sector in which it is used.
There is a second point of entry that is often overlooked: substantial changes to the organisation of work. If implementing the textile passport means that an entire department will work differently, is assigned new tasks or work processes shift structurally, that in itself can be reason to consult the works council about the organisational side, regardless of whether the software processes employee data.
What this comes down to in practice
For most SMEs implementing the textile passport, the impact on personnel is limited to a new way of working: someone collects data from suppliers, checks it, and has the passport compiled and hosted. That is more a matter of information than consent — employees who will work with the system simply need clarity about what is expected of them and what data they should provide. Information is different from the statutory approval right, but in practice it prevents most discussion, precisely because no one is caught by surprise.
It becomes more complicated with companies that combine data collection with broader digitalisation of procurement and production processes. If the supplier of the textile passport software also offers functionality that monitors the work of buyers or quality inspectors, that is a separate assessment that is separate from the obligation to provide the passport. how the data for the passport comes about shows what type of data is actually needed for the passport itself, so that you can assess whether a supplier adds more to it than is necessary.
What you can do concretely
The practical question is not whether there is a law that links the textile passport and employee participation — there is none, because these are two separate frameworks that sometimes touch on each other. The practical question is whether the software you choose registers anything about employees in addition to the product data the passport requires. This is something you can check with your software supplier before signing a contract, and something you can submit to your works council itself or to a lawyer familiar with employee participation legislation if in doubt. We cannot make that assessment for you, and we do not: the regulation on the textile passport concerns the product, not your personnel policy, and the two questions should be answered separately.
What does help is to clearly identify which data is precisely needed for the passport, so that the conversation with the works council — if you hold one — is based on facts rather than assumptions. In the knowledge base with elaborated topics per situation you will find the background to the data a textile passport requires, independent of what a software package may add to it.
First overview without obligations
If you still need to determine whether and when the textile passport will apply to your products, and which data is required for it, the free quick-scan with a few short questions provides an initial indication. Questions about what is precisely available free of charge and what falls under a subscription are answered clearly on the frequently asked questions page.