Newsletter-21

323 LABOR LAW In order to prevent such detrimental consequences, as a result of European Commission studies that were held in 2008, European Union Directive number 2008/104/EC (“Directive”) was published on 19.11.2008. This Directive is the first regulation designating certain standards for temporary employment relationships. The main aim of the Directive is to introduce minimum provisions in order to protect the rights of the employees who are employed within the scope of temporary employment relationships, and to ensure the facilitation of equal treatment to such employees. In our country, intermediation activities in the private sector in finding jobs for employees, which were previously banned, were ena- bled as per Labor Law numbered 4857 (“Labor Law”) and Turkish Labor Institution Law numbered 4094 (“Labor Institution Law”). On the other hand, the intermediation activities in the private sector to establish temporary employment relationships were not allowed. This issue was on the agenda during the drafting of the Labor Law. Actu- ally, since the issue was stated in ILO Contract numbered 181 as an alternative employment method, the science commission that drafted the Labor Law initially included the occupational leasing method in the text of the draft as the 93rd article. However, due to the heated de- bates that it caused among the labor unions, this article was removed from the draft text of the Labor Law. The main goal of the Draft Law is to allow private employment agencies to intermediate in the establishment of temporary employ- ment relationships. As a matter of fact, the lack of legal basis for such intermediation activities of the private employment agencies has given rise to the loss of rights of employees who are currently working under such model. As mentioned in the preamble of the Draft Law, the fundamental aim of such Draft Law is to increase the flexibility and employability of the current workforce and, as result, to provide efficiency in employment services. In summary, the target is to estab- lish a balance of flexibility-security in the workforce market, which currently consists of either registered employees having job security, yet lacking flexibility, and unregistered employees having flexible employment regimes, but who lack job security. Moreover, it is also targeted to make all players of the workforce market adopt the concept of “ flexible security. ”