www.agp.org | Archives - WTO info: GATS laws in Turkey

Dear friends,Dear friends,

I'm sending a brief informative note on the latest developments related with workers and civil servants in Turkey. I think these regulations could be taken as an example on how the GATS and other liberalization policies will be implemented in different countries

In solidarity

GAYE

BRIEF INFORMATION ON THE LATEST CHANGES IN LABOUR LAW WHICH PASSED FROM THE PARLIEMENT LAST WEEK, JOB SECUR�TY LAW WHICH HAS BEEN PUT IN FORCE SINCE FROM MARCH 2003 AND PLANNED REFORMS RELATED WITH PUBLIC SERVICES

a.. Following a six months delay the Job Security Law which was prepared by the previous government became legitimate and has been put in force since from 15 March 2003. For working peoples, the most critical dimension in this law is "performance criteria" mostly based on subjective factors which could/will easily be abused by the employers. Performance criteria have been defined under two main titles : economical reasons in the workplace and the reasons associated with personal behaviors of workers. Despite workers was entitled to bring unfair cases to the court, according to the opinions of employers' organizations the court can not judge whether these performance criteria are fair or not, it can only decide whether worker violates the criteria or not.

b.. The provisions in Labour Law were passed from the Great National Assembly of Turkey after the discussions between the deputies of two political parties in the Parliament. However, due to minority position of CHP (Republican Peoples Party) but also because of their political and ideological opinions are not so different from liberals all problematic provisions were passed by the Government Party AKP without facing with any difficulties. By this law, working for 12 hours in a day will not be assumed as overtime working unless average total worked hours are not over 360 hours within two months period and workers won't be able to receive a higher hourly wage for daily extra hours any more. Moreover, the workers can be rent and lended by private work agencies and employers respectively according to the law. To work on call, work to compensate for non-worked hours, work with trial period are also among those a-tipic works in the law.

c.. Despite a number of radical changes in production relations as pointed out above , the existing barriers in front of organizing of workers have remained unchanged. It's still a must for the Unions to reach 10% + 1 worker quota on country basis in given sector and 50% + 1 worker on workplace level in order to be respected as representative organization.

d.. The AKP Government has also plans to decentralize the essential public services including education, health, construction, culture and etc. By that way all public servants and state properties regarding with the services concerned like teachers and doctors and school and hospital buildings respectively will be transferred to the Municipalities and Special Administrations for Cities(SACs) and these authorities will be able to sell these public services with market prices. By this draft law public servants will loose all guarantees that they gained by struggles which took long years. For instance they won't have job security any more, because the condition defined by the AKP Government is that the municipalities and SACs will provide financial resources which are necessary to run these services how ever they want i.e they could privatize some of them or they transfer some services to subcontractors but all these options must be run according to the rules of free competition. It's therefore the act no.657 for public servants which provides job and salary security will no be longer apply to teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, architects and so on who worked for state for many years and this group of employee will be applied the same what for blue collars in private sector. In another word, white collar employees are becoming the same with blue collars and same labour law as explained above (temporary works, no overtime working payment, work on call, to work as borrowed-lended or rental employee and etc) will be applied to them too. This also means that public servants will loose their unions and trade union rights which have been already very limited and it's because they're deprived from any protection that they had before, it will be very hard for them to organize in a union. On the other hand, workers and poors will have to pay market prices in order to send their children to the schools and to receive health and municipality services.

e.. The planned changes in public services which are related with the GATS led a number of debates between several groups in the country. According to the opinions of liberal leftists these new regulations are better than the old one because the state would be shrinked; local administrations are more democratic than central state authorities and so on. According to the nationalist leftists the biggest danger is that the nation state is loosing it's unitary and only central governments can be "social", local governments can not be social. From Marxists' point of view neither the new regulation is democratic nor the old central one was social. According to Marxists, the debate must be focused on the conflict between labour and capital. Because both new and previous regulations on public servants have/had aimed to support capital accumulation process. And the only loosers of both system were/are the working peoples. The new regulations could be called as "Localize and commercialize".

GAYE YILMAZ

Working Group Against MAI and Globalisation-TURKEY