Out of Scope Employees in Turkish Collective Bargaining System

Abstract

Collective Bargaining is the process in which labor unions representing workers on the one hand and employers or employers’ institutions on the other gather and come to the table in order to determine working rules and conditions of both parties and the process to conclude the collective agreement. In Article 39 of 6356 numbered Law of Trade Unions and Collective Labor Agreement, issues about benefiting from a collective labor agreement are included. Out-of-scope employee concept in industrial relation application refers to people excluded from collective labor agreement regime even though they are able to be member of a labor union, and even they are, as a result of consensus of the parties of collective labor agreement, in other words those to whom collective labor agreement is not applied. Exclusion of some workers such as directors, chiefs, engineers and even all office employees which are members or able to be a member of labor unions from the scope of the agreement is an encountered case in the application of collective labor agreements and this issue is regulated through scope articles included in collective labor agreements. The circumstances of out of scope employees cause discussions.