Page 8 Volume 20 Issue 4 2013 INTERNATIONAL union rights FOCUS ❐ RECOGNITION AND BARGAINING SYSTEMS to the minimum wage, now 978 Turkish Lira (approx. 350 euro) per month, which is considered significantly below an adequate living wage. December 2012: New labour legislation but still the old authoritarianism Under pressure from the European Union and International Labour Organisation, the AKP government enacted the Law of Trade Unions and Collective Agreements in December 2012. But the new legislation – shaped in large part by the principal employer organisations – offers few genuine protections for workers seeking to form unions. Indeed, in certain key respects – bargaining rights for new unions, penalties for unlawful management practices, and additional restrictions on strikes – the new law may be worse than the 1983 legislation it has replaced. In the area of bargaining rights, the sector threshold for unions has been reduced from 10 percent to 3 percent, but the number of sectors has also been reduced and their size increased, and thus for some new unions, the 3 percent threshold may actually be more difficult to achieve than the old 10 percent threshold. The law reduces the already weak financial penalties for unlawful terminations for employees at small and medium sized enterprises and for employees with less than six months seniority, who together constitute about one half of the Turkish labour force. Thus, contrary to the hopes of international organisations, the new law continues the old tradition of authoritarianism and does little to strengthen fundamental labour rights and freedoms. It will provide few additional protections for workers seeking to organise at the Turkish subsidiaries of European-based MNCs. Employer anti-unionism is endemic In the private sector, the situation facing independent unions is dire. Employer violations of workers’ rights are endemic. Both Turkish and foreign-owned companies routinely harass and intimidate workers who try to form unions. They fire union activists, retaliate against union members in the workplace, pressure workers to resign from the union and interfere with the free choice of non-union workers. Employers form ‘yellow unions’ and pressure workers to join them. While unlawful, these tactics usually go completely unpunished. The penalties against unfair dismissals, for example, are weak and do not act as a deterrent against unlawful behaviour. Labour courts often order Turkish employers to reinstate workers, but they can choose instead to avoid reinstatement by paying a minimal amount of compensation. Union members are often denied promotions and pay Workers’ Victory at DHL Turkey Both Turkish and foreign-owned companies routinely harass and intimidate workers who try to form unions JOHN LOGAN is Professor and Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University and a senior research fellow at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley Labor Center In 2012 and 2013, he wrote two reports on DP-DHL’s labour practices in Turkey T he anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara, and other Turkish cities in June 2012 brought international attention to the authoritarian tendencies of Prime Minister Erdo an’s Justice and Development Party (‘AKP’) government . Since first winning power in 2002, the Erdo an government has also exercised significant repression in the area of labour rights. It has limited workers’ rights to organise and strike, and has allowed companies to violate workers’ rights with virtual impunity. As a result, Turkey has become the ‘de-unionisation champion of the OECD’. But even in the face of this repression, Turkish workers won union recognition and collective bargaining at DHL Turkey in October 2013. Repression of workers’ rights has been the norm in modern Turkey Turkey has repeatedly restricted labour rights in recent times. Indeed, with the exception of brief periods in the 1960s and 1970s, the systematic repression of independent unions has been a constant theme in the 100-year history of the Turkish Republic. Repression of unions and strikes followed the military coups of 1960, 1971, and 1980, and even after the return to civilian rule, the government placed significant restrictions on the right to organise. Under 1983 legislation, which stayed in place for almost three decades, unions were required to win majority support at the workplace and demonstrate that they represented at least 10 percent of all the workers in their...