Where employee representatives form a permanent committee with the right to discuss / influence work related decisions, usually excluding pay and other terms and conditions of employment. They are known by many other names including joint consultative committees, staff or company councils, works or office committees, participation groups and joint panels. Within Europe, (under the Transnational Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 1999), works councils must be set up in multi-site companies that employ: at least 1,000 workers in Europe, and at least 150 employees in each of at least two member states. In the UK, part-time workers may be calculated as ‘half’ a person. Companies do not have to be ‘European’. For example they could be American or Japanese yet still fulfil the above criteria. Each work council consists of between 3 and 30 people made up of at least one representative from each country plus management representatives. Representatives discuss and negotiate a wide range of issues, such as, business performance, growth and development plans, changes in working practices, and collective redundancies.