It's nothing like that at all. They have no powers to make any subjective judgements about hiring. They can only object to a hiring if the company has contradi

It's nothing like that at all. They have no powers to make any subjective judgements about hiring. They can only object to a hiring if the company has contradicted the law or it's own policies. For instance if the company makes a team of Android developers redundant on Monday and then hires an external Android developer on Tuesday, the Works Council would want to know a very good reason why one of the potential internal candidates was not selected instead. I guess a company could ask their opinion if they wanted to, but they are not legally compelled to do so. In my experience no-one from the works council is physically present in interviews either. They are just informed afterwards that a hiring decision is made and they have to approve or reject it.