Burak Darbaz and Gökçe Uysal-Kolaşin
Trade unions in Turkey have limited rights when it comes to signing collective bargaining agreements. As a result, Turkey has a very low collective bargaining coverage rate, particularly compared to the EU countries. ILO estimated the collective bargaining coverage rate for Turkey as 10.8% in 2001. As betam, we calculate the same rate as 13.3% in 2006, using TURKSTAT’s 2006 Wage Structure Survey.
Wage-earners working in the following sectors seem to have a higher probability of collective bargaining coverage: Electricity, gas and water supply, mining and quarrying, transport, storage and communication. However, those who work in these sectors constitute a small part of the entire population. Almost half of all wage-earners work in manufacturing, which has a collective bargaining coverage rate of 18%.
Firm-level analysis reveals that the firm size and the collective bargaining coverage rate are positively correlated.
Employee-level analysis shows that in general, those who are covered by collective bargaining agreements receive a much higher wage compared to those who are not covered by it. However, these results are descriptive rather than econometric; hence measure raw correlations rather than causal relations.
doc. ResearchBrief028
pdf. ResearchBrief028