The Joint Liability in Contractor and Subcontractor Relationship in Turkish Labor Law

Abstract

The relationship between the contractor and the subcontractor, the subject of our law since 1936 by the Law No. 3008, has been subject to significant regulations by the Law No. 4857 due to malicious law enforcement in working life. The founding elements of the contractor-subcontractor relationship regulated in Article 2 of the Labor Law No. 4857 are categorized in titles; the existence of two separate employers as the contractor and the subcontractor, the work given to the subcontractor is a job related to the production of goods and services, the work given to the subcontractor being an auxiliary job related to the production of goods and services or a part of the main job that requires expertise due to the necessity of the business and the technological reasons, the subcontractor’s workers being employed in the workplace belonging to the main employer, and employing the employees of the subcontractor only by being assigned to the job received from the contractor. A kind of collusion has been regulated in the Labor Law regarding the contractor-subcontractor relationship. Accordingly, if an employees of the contractor are recruited by the subcontractor and their rights are restricted, or if the contractor has established a contractor-subcontractor relationship with his former employee, it is stated in the law that the contractor-subcontractor relationship will be considered to be based on collusion. The contractor-subcontractor relationship has brought a broad perspective in terms of the responsibility of the contractor. The contractor-subcontractor were held responsible for the receivables of the employees, and the employees were given the right to apply to contractor of their choice or to both. In this study; first of all, the concepts of contractor and subcontractor and the elements of the contractor-subcontractor relationship are included. Then, the collusion in the contractor-subcontractor relationship was examined. Eventually, joint liability situations in the contractor-subcontractor relationship are discussed.