Compliance of occupational health and safety practices in workplaces with legislation: The case of çorum province

When preventive and restrictive measures are taken against existing workplace hazards, 98% of occupational accidents can be prevented. Achieving this percentage requires effective and feasible occupational health and safety measures. In our country, Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) was enacted by the legislator to ensure such measures are taken. However, since the enactment of Law No. 6331, there has not been a significant decrease in the number of occupational accidents, nor a significant increase in the identification of occupational diseases. These findings highlight the need to determine the level of implementation of the relevant law in workplaces and identify its deficiencies. Therefore, in this thesis, a study was conducted using the Structured In-Depth Interview Method, one of the qualitative research methods, to determine whether the OHS law and related regulations are being implemented in workplaces. This study is significant as it is the first in the literature to statistically discuss the applicability of the relevant law. In the study, the articles of the relevant law and regulations were transformed into a questionnaire consisting of 46 questions, and the questionnaire was then discussed with 10 occupational safety specialists, 10 workplace physicians, 10 employers, and 10 employees through video or audio recordings. Subsequently, these video and audio recordings were examined to obtain detailed descriptive statistics. According to the results, while a smaller number of law articles were found to be correctly implemented, a substantial amount of evidence indicated that many articles were either inadequately implemented or not implemented at all. As a result of these findings, several notable recommendations have been made: ensuring that the entire cost of occupational health and safety is not solely the responsibility of the employer, the need for occupational safety specialists to be employed by the state, and the allocation of authority and responsibility among occupational safety specialists, employers, and workplace physicians rather than assigning every task to each stakeholder.