Union membership in Turkey stands at 13.8 percent

Duvar English

Only a 13.84 percent of workers (excluding civil servants) in Turkey are union members as of Jan. 31, according to figures released by the Family, Labor and Social Services.

Of the total number of 13,856,801 workers registered in the social security system in Turkey, only 1,917,893 are members of a union, said that data.

The Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) has the most membership among the unions, with 1,018,092 members. Türk-İş was followed by the Confederation of Turkish Real Trade Unions (Hak-İş) and the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), with 666,303 and 184,852 members respectively.

The data found a decline of 0.02 percentage points in the unionization rate of the workforce compared to last year, as this rate stood at 13.86 percent as of Jan. 31, 2019. But, the number of workers in labor unions increased by 58,855 in one year.

One out of every four workers in Turkey was protected by a collective bargaining agreement at the end of 1980s when the almost continuous decline of the coverage began. The lowest membership rate was in 2013, but since then it slightly risen.

The number of union workers rose from 1 million to 1.8 million in five-and-a-half years between January 2013 and July 2018. The share of union workers among registered workers rose from 9.2 to 12.8 per cent in that period.