The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu confessed, “We have identified the obstacles facing the business and investment environment and removed them together with the government.”
Having been the president of TOBB, Hisarcıklıoğlu gave a speech on May 15 at the TOBB 74th general assembly where he was re-elected, saying that they had made it possible to reduce employment costs and to shift the occupational health and safety regulations in favour of the employers.
“Another area where we suffered great distress was the judicial system. Especially in the cases of the Labor Courts, 99% of which unfairly punished employers. In order to address this, the mandatory mediation system was put into practice. Cases which lasted months, even years, are now resolved in days and weeks,” he said.
“We ensured the reduction of the real estate tax burden on the industrialists. In real estate, home appliances and furniture, taxes were lowered with our suggestion. Air and cruise travel support for the tourism sector was implemented through our request. A 50-year dream in agriculture has become a reality,” he noted, adding many other pro-capitalists gains they have yielded during the rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
“With this in mind, I would like to thank the President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan], Prime Minister [Binali Yıldırım], Ministers and the TBMM [Turkish parliament] who have always supported us, as well as our bureaucrats who worked together with us on behalf of our community,” the TOBB President said.
MANDATORY MEDIATION SYSTEM
AKP government imposed a mandatory mediation system at the beginning of 2018 in order to prevent the workers from directly appealing to labour courts, to which Hisarcıklıoğlu referred.
According to the new system, initially, the workers have to appeal to the “mediators” for resolving the disputes between employers and employees before filing any lawsuit against employees.
The system enforces the workers to resort to the “mediators” even for their basic rights such as severance payments, overtime working issues and annual leave payments.
As the AKP government attempted to conceal the anti-labour aspect of the mediation system, it presented it as a “worker-friendly” implementation for allegedly diminishing the labour courts’ loads and the costs of the right to legal remedies for “peace in business” with “fast procedures”.
However, the workers are enforced to resort to extra-juridical solutions, resulting in unlawful irregularities in defiance of the working people. The mandatory mediation system forces workers to bargain with capitalists, which would culminate in favour the employers since the parties are not equal in such a bargaining.
