Summary record of the first session of the Team Council

Summary record of the first session of the Team Council

Symbol: RC/TM/2026/SR.1
Date: 24 February 2026
Kind: Minutes
Status: Published
Author and signatory: Nikola Jurić, Chair, Team Council (Leipzig, Germany)
Recipient: —

Meeting details

Summary of proceedings

1. The Team Council held its first session on 24 February 2026 through the two Open Table sittings listed above. The chair explained that the purpose was to establish a common understanding of the evidence requested under TM-001, identify practical questions for members, and agree how initial material would be collected. The Council was at an early evidence-gathering stage. No pattern test had been completed, no draft fix was before the Council, and no recommendation was submitted for decision.

2. The chair recalled that the call for evidence, issued as RC/TM/2026/1 on 10 February, was an invitation to report experience rather than a presumption that every small employer faced the same problem. Members were asked to describe the situation encountered, the steps and costs involved, the time period, and the consequences for a hiring decision. The chair emphasized that reports should distinguish direct payments from administrative time and should state when figures were estimates.

3. The chair noted the Council’s recorded starting position: eight members from six countries and no reports filed under the Team Council as of the meeting date. The record therefore contained no Team Council report sample from which to calculate a median amount at stake, compare situations or team sizes, or assess geographic concentration. The absence of reports was treated as an early-stage status, not as evidence that the issue was absent.

4. In the Asia-Pacific sitting, Ms. Amina Rahman of Dhaka, Bangladesh, said that the evidence request should make room for businesses that had considered hiring but had not proceeded. In her view, reporting only completed hires could leave out the decision point at which expected costs or uncertainty had influenced a business. She suggested asking whether the person was ultimately hired, whether the decision was delayed, or whether the owner continued without additional staff. The chair recorded this as a proposed evidence prompt, not a finding about frequency.

5. Mr. Rohan Kulkarni of Pune, India, asked that reports separate one-time registration requirements from recurring employment costs. He observed that a respondent might be able to estimate a payment but have difficulty assigning a value to time spent learning requirements, supplying information, or correcting a filing. He recommended allowing members to identify those categories separately and to mark an amount as unknown rather than supply a weak estimate.

6. Ms. Wanjiku Njoroge of Nairobi, Kenya, emphasized the need to record the size and stage of the employer without requesting identifying business information. She suggested that a report should say whether the owner was making a first hire or adding to an existing team, and should describe the intended role in general terms. She also supported asking what happened after the obstacle arose, including whether the owner changed the hours, timing, or arrangement being considered.

7. Mr. Martin Keller of Dresden, Germany, said that evidence should distinguish a rule that was difficult to understand from a cost that was clearly known but difficult to meet. He proposed recording whether the respondent had obtained professional assistance, used a public information service, or relied on informal guidance. The distinction, he said, would help the Council avoid treating information problems and payment burdens as interchangeable.

8. In the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting, Ms. Camila Ferreira of Recife, Brazil, supported a short reporting form with an optional narrative field. She said that a form limited to fixed categories might fail to capture the sequence of events, while an entirely open-ended form could make reports difficult to compare. She proposed that members first answer a small set of common questions and then add a concise account in their own words.

9. Ms. Léa Bouchard of Montréal, Canada, asked that the request identify the period to which a reported cost applied and whether the amount was paid by the employer, withheld from an employee, or shared through a contribution arrangement. She considered this necessary to prevent unlike amounts from being grouped together. She also recommended that the Council avoid implying that a particular amount was typical until a sufficient body of reports had been reviewed.

10. Ms. Sora Tanaka of Osaka, Japan, stressed that members should be able to submit a report even where the outcome was uncertain or the hiring plan had changed for more than one reason. She proposed that the form ask respondents to identify other relevant factors, such as demand or available cash, without requiring them to assign a precise share of the decision to each factor. The chair recorded the point as a safeguard against overstating causation.

11. In the exchange following the member interventions, participants supported a common evidence record that could be used across jurisdictions while preserving room for differences in local arrangements. Members agreed that a report should not require the name of a business, an employee, a government official, or a service provider. They also agreed that cases should describe practices and processes, not make unsupported claims about an individual organization.

12. The chair summarized the discussion as a set of questions for evidence collection: what step or cost arose; when it arose in relation to a proposed hire; whether it was one-time or recurring; how the respondent knew or estimated the amount; what effect, if any, it had on the hiring decision; and what other factors were present. The list was agreed as a working guide for collecting reports. It was not adopted as a final questionnaire or as a definition of the problem.

13. Members considered how to handle comparisons between places. The discussion supported recording the jurisdiction and relevant date where the respondent was comfortable doing so, while avoiding direct comparisons until the Council understood differences in the underlying arrangements. Members noted that the same label may refer to different obligations in different places and that an amount without context could mislead. No country ranking or comparison was proposed.

14. On privacy and publication, the chair confirmed that members were not to name their own businesses in reports and that identifying details should be omitted from any case prepared for public use unless the member had expressly chosen a public seat. Members supported summarizing recurring experiences in aggregate and preserving individual reports for Council review under the Assembly’s process. The chair asked members to flag any information they believed could identify a person or business.

15. The Council discussed the sequence for its work. Reports would first be gathered and reviewed for relevance and completeness. The Council would then assess the reported experiences against the Assembly’s five-part pattern test: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. The chair stated that a draft fix would be considered only if the evidence supported a pattern and that any proposed text would proceed to public consultation before an Assembly ballot. Members would not describe the current call as a settled policy position.

16. Members agreed that the initial work should prioritize usable evidence over speed. In particular, no member was asked to provide a minimum number of reports, and no report would be treated as representative solely because it was detailed. The Council would record gaps in the evidence as well as reported experiences. If the material remained too limited to support a test, the Council could continue gathering evidence rather than infer a result.

17. The chair invited members who had not yet filed reports to use the call for evidence and encouraged them to share it with other eligible small-business owners without forwarding personal details without consent. The Secretariat was asked to maintain the intake record and to bring recurring questions about the form back to the chair. The Council did not set a numerical target for submissions or a deadline for closing the call at this session.

18. At the conclusion of the discussion, the chair confirmed that the meeting had taken no substantive decision on employment-cost policy. The Council had clarified the purpose of TM-001, agreed a working set of evidence prompts and privacy safeguards, and assigned preliminary collection tasks. The chair thanked the members for distinguishing reported experience from conclusions that would require broader corroboration.

Decisions and action items

1. Evidence stage confirmed. The Council will continue gathering reports under TM-001. The meeting made no finding under the five-part pattern test and adopted no proposed standard or other fix.

2. Working evidence prompts. The chair will prepare a concise set of prompts reflecting the discussion: the step or cost, its timing and recurrence, the basis for any estimate, its reported effect on a hiring decision, and other relevant factors. The prompts will be used to guide collection and may be refined as reports are received.

3. Intake record. The Secretariat will maintain a Team Council record of reports received and note missing or unclear information for follow-up where appropriate. The record will distinguish reports from countries, amounts, situations and team sizes only where the available information supports those categories. No missing field will be filled by inference.

4. Member contributions. Members will submit experience-based reports where available and may share the call with other eligible owners. Reports should omit business names and avoid identifying other people or organizations. Members may state that an amount or outcome is unknown.

5. Next session. The Council agreed to continue the discussion at the next monthly Open Table on 24 March 2026. The session will review the evidence received and any clarification needed for the collection process. The Secretariat will confirm sitting arrangements through the usual notice.

Record of the meeting