The Law no. 6715 amending the Labor Law and Turkish Employment Agency Law (“Law no. 6715”) has been published in the Official Gazette numbered 29717 and dated May 20, 2016. Law no. 6715 brought important changes and new regulations with regard to remote working and temporary employment. In addition, Law no. 6715 also includes regulations regarding the private employment agencies.

Temporary Employment

Temporary Employment is an important alternative for the businesses and such alternative provides convenience to manage the required workforce when the demand in a given market is inconsistent. In this regard, it would be accurate to say that temporary employment has also a positive effect for the employees as well.

Law no. 6715 amends the article 7 of Labor Law and broadens the definition of temporary employment. Accordingly, temporary employment relationship may be established through private employment agencies or by assigning an employee to another work place of the same holding company or group of companies. Pursuant to the amendment, the employer and a private employment agency must enter into a written contract to establish such relationship. Article 7 of Labor Law lists the cases where temporary employment is allowed and limits the term of such relationship for certain situations.

It is prohibited to enter into a temporary employment relationship in governmental organizations and underground mining business. Additionally, in case an employer engages in collective redundancy, no temporary employment relationship may be established for eight months.

Importantly, temporary employees have the right to be equally treated, as regular employees with regard to the social services provided at the work place and fundamental working conditions cannot be different from the conditions which would have been provided in case such temporary employee was hired as a regular one.

Lastly, employers who enter into a temporary employment relationship by violating the rules provided in the Labor Law may face an administrative fine pursuant to the article 99 of Labor Law.

Remote Working

Law no. 6715 also amends the article 14 of Labor Law regarding the remote working and adds certain paragraphs to the article. An important point with regard to remote working is that a remote worker cannot be treated differently from the equal employees unless there is an important ground for such different treatment.

Labor law sets forth that Ministry of Labor and Social Security will determine the works where remote working is allowed. However, no secondary regulation has been yet published by the Ministry.

Conclusion

It is yet unknown how the courts will approach to these regulations and institutions in practice. Nevertheless, considering the tendency of labor courts to protect the employees, it would not be false to state that such practice will continue for the practices of temporary employment and remote working.