Rising Informality, Precarity and Dualization in the Turkish Labor Market

Activity: Talk or presentation typesOral presentation

Description

Non-standard contracts become very common in several developing economies including Turkey to cut down labor costs and promote employment generation. Until recently, temporary employment has been relatively restricted on paper. Nonetheless, Turkish employers have various other methods to raise the flexibility of their workforce. Sub-contracting, bogus self-employment and informal sector jobs are widespread. Especially among the younger, female and less skilled labor market participants, non-standard forms of jobs have been increasing. Moreover, a great share of these employment types are involuntarily chosen by workers, which elevate the personal insecurities. In addition, the flexible contracts have various social protection gaps in terms of eligibility, contribution and integration. Informal sector employees, whose share is sizable in Turkey, are entirely left out of employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits, pension and health insurance. Temporary contract holders suffer from meeting the minimum number of days of contributions to social security to be eligible. Sub-contracted workers are unable to join to trade unions and be covered under collective bargaining agreements. Hence, there is a growing disparity between well-protected and well-paid jobs in the formal sector as opposed to the employees that have informal and precarious positions. The paper first presents the development of atypical work arrangements in Turkey, discusses the overlaps and differences across various forms of non-standard employment. Then, it looks into the labor market policies that are required to narrow down the gap between permanent and on-permanent workers in Turkey.

Period24 Apr 201926 Apr 2019
Event title 37th Annual International Labour Process Conference
Event typeConference
LocationVienna, AustriaShow on map