Sendika hakkı, toplu sözleşme ve grevi de içeren toplu eylem haklarını kapsar mı?

This article examines and evaluates the three successive judgements of the European Court of Human Rights as to the violation by Turkey of the Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights, starting from the first judgments of the Court in 1976 onwards.

In its three successive violation judgements within the period of November 2006 and July 2007, the Court has concluded that the right to form and to join trade unions also includes, in accordance with the principle of non-divisibility, the rights to collective bargaining and to collective actions. Thus, those who are employed as workers or public servants have the right to sign collective agreements and the right to resort to collective action for theprotection of “their own interests”. Similarly, the unions they form have the right to sign collective agreements and the right to resort to collective action to promote and to defend “the interests of their members”. These rights are under the protection of the Convention. The Court has so concluded on the basis of the goal of “the protection of one’s interests”, in spite of the very limited material content of the positive legislation which affords “the right to form and to join trade unions” in Article 11. This approach —which the Court had not adopted at the beginning— is in line with the “the common international law on trade union rights” consisting of the pertinent conventions and case-laws or decisions of the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation, and the Council of Europe. The relevance of the foregoing judgements is that the obligations which our Country has assumed by the ratification of ILO Conventions No 87 and No 98 and yet not fulfilled have thereby been reinforced by now the judgements of a supervisory body of a “judicial” nature.

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European Court of Human Rights ,

Article 11 ,

International Labour Organisation ,