On-call work in Turkish law

Emerged with the Industrial Revolution, typical employment contracts which stipulate the worker working on a full-time basis by being dependent on a single employer, could not fully meet the needs of the parties of the employment contract over time, and in this regard, the "atypical" forms of employment have come in the force. The need for flexibility in workplaces has increased due to various reasons such as globalization, economic, technological or social developments and increasing competitive conditions. In order to meet this need, various flexibility practices about working hours and new employment forms have started to come to the fore. In this context, on-call work has emerged as an atypical form of employment that provides flexibility in working hours. Although it has been seen in practice, on-call work was not legislated during the effective period of Labor Law No. 1475 and was regulated with Labor Law No. 4857. The legal status of the regulations regarding on-call work, which is regulated as a special type of part-time work with Article 14 of the Law, is controversial in the doctrine. In addition, there are uncertainties regarding the rights of on-call workers within the scope of the Labor Law, which is mainly based on full-time work, although it includes flexible working forms. From this point of view, in this study, first of all, the concept of on-call work was discussed together with the concepts of flexibility and part-time work, and its development, types, purpose and differences with other types of employment contracts were explained. Afterwards, the rights of workers were examined in terms of individual labor law, collective labor law and social security law and it was aimed to draw attention to the problems in the practice by giving place to the different opinions in the doctrine about on-call work, especially the discussions on the legal status of the provisions in Article 14 of the Labor Law.