Human Rights in Turkey - Workers' Rights

Workers' Rights

The Constitution affirms the right of workers to form labor unions "without obtaining permission" and "to possess the right to become a member of a union and to freely withdraw from membership" (Article 51). Articles 53 and 54 affirm the right of workers to bargain collectively and to strike, respectively. The law prohibits strikes by civil servants, public workers engaged in the safeguarding of life and property, workers in the coal mining and petroleum industries, sanitation services, national defense, banking, and education; however, many workers in these sectors conducted strikes in violation of these restrictions with general impunity. The law requires that, in order to become a bargaining agent, a union must represent 50 percent plus one of the employees at a given work site and 10 percent of all the workers in that particular industry. Labor law prohibits union leaders from becoming officers of or otherwise performing duties for political parties and from working for or being involved in the operation of any profit-making enterprise

Most labor experts in the country estimated that approximately 20 percent of the wage and salary workers in the labor force were unionized. Turkey has had a standard state-run pensions system based on European models since the 1930s. Furthermore, since 1999, Turkey has a state-run unemployment insurance system, introduced by Law 4447 obligatory for all declared workers.