New Turkish law deals blow to unions
Turkey's unionized workforce has dropped from 57.5% to 9.6% over the past decade, with Ankara offering weak solutions to the problem, including a hotline where workers can report their bosses.
The working class in Turkey is being redesigned. The government has laid the foundations for a new kind of worker who is de-unionized, defenseless and will act as an informant. The subcontracting system, which encourages de-unionization, has expanded into many fields, including health care and municipal services.
The 18 miners who perished in last month’s tragic accident in Ermenek did not belong to trade unions. Trade unions are off-limits, especially for workers in small enterprises, where they can easily be fired if they attempt to join.
Under a new law, the collective bargaining threshold for existing trade unions has been reduced from 3% to 1%, meaning that a trade union has to recruit at least 1% of employees in a given sector to win the right to collective bargaining. However, for new trade unions to be founded in the future, the threshold remains 3%.
The provision essentially paves the way for existing trade unions to become “monopolies.” This is because the 3% threshold is virtually impossible to attain for a new trade union under the present conditions, in which even long-established trade unions are struggling to recruit 1% of workers in a given sector. The provision is a government “favor” to existing trade unions. But because the government has for years encouraged the subcontracting system, even old trade unions are hardly able to achieve the 1% threshold.
