EXTENDED SUMMARY

The statistics published by the UNICEF and ILO, permanent parts of the United Nations System, explicitly proved that child labour is still one the biggest problems all over the World despite all measures. Although the numbers of child labour have been decreasing recently, it tends to increase during the pandemic. Besides the economic factors, the pandemic paved the way for increasing of child labour. It might not be realistic to expect to decrease of child labour under these circumstances in the near future.

The employment of young labour that is the main subject of this paper, has consequently left behind at this situation. In other words, young labour has been widely accepted instead of recognizing it as a problematic issue. This situation may differ regarding the economic development levels of countries.

Federal Bureau of Statistics regularly publishes statistics on young labour in Germany, and the policies about young labour are determined and revised according to these statistics. In Turkey, the latest statistics on young labour has been published regarding the last quarter of 2019 by TÜİK.

The legislation on the employment of young labour has been enriched year by year in the international law. These legislations essentially determine the minimum age for working and working conditions of young labour. They draw a general framework to protect the young labour who are not mature both physically and emotionally. The main principle about young labour is to regulate their employment without hindering their education life. In other words, the young employment should be a component of education or the young only completed his/her education should be employed.

Today, all EU countries, without any exception, has legal regulations on the employment of the young. In this context, Council Directive 94/33/EC of 22 June 1994 on the protection of young people at work might be accepted as a guide for EU countries. The directive aims to determine the minimum requirements for the protection of young people at work. This Directive shall apply to any person under 18 years of age having employed contract or an employment relationship defined by the law in force in a member state. The Directive defines young people as people under the age of 18 and children as young people under the age of 15 or who are still in full-time compulsory education in accordance with national legislation. The provisions of this directive guide Labour Acts both in Turkey and Germany, as in all other EU member states.

The legal regulations on the protection of young workers have a long history in Germany. The first legislation took place in 19th century. The current legislation is the Act on the Protection of Young Workers accepted in 1976 and revised in 2021. The decisions of Federal Labour Court filled the legal loopholes in this Act over the years and lead the application in Germany.

In Turkey, although there were some legal regulations on protection of child labour in pre-republican period, the first regulations on working age took place in the early republican period. In parallel with the developments in the labour law over the years, the regulations on young workers have also been revised. Especially, the candidateship of Turkey to the EU which gained impetus during the 1990’s and inadequacy of the Labour Act no:1475 pave the way for a brand-new labour act. As it is clear in the preamble of the new Labour Act No: 4857 adopted in 2003, the Act that comprises the provisions prohibiting the child labour and allowing young labour under some certain circumstances, are exactly appropriate with the EU norms.

This paper draws a general framework, without giving the specific details, the current provisions on the employment of young workers in Germany and Turkey from the comparative law perspective. However, particularly, the legal outline of young workers in Germany has been discussed in this paper.

The paper first describes the concept of child and young workers, and then compares the current legal regulations and conditions allowing the employment of young workers in Germany and Turkey. As a consequence, the common and different legal points and issues on young workers in these two countries have been underlined in this paper. It also focuses on employee participation, as an important issue in both German labour law and industrial relations, besides working time, resting time, night work and annual paid leave. Furthermore, it mentions the lack of regulations on child and young workers employed widely in culture, art and media sector recent years in Turkey. The paper dedicated to Prof. Dr. Gülten Kutal is concluded with a general discussion on young labour and workers.