ABSTRACT

Today, Federal Germany is an important country that is taken as a reference for those working in the field of comparative law with the laws it has accepted and implemented in the field of labour and social security law, as in many other fields. In many scientific studies conducted in Turkey, the applications in the Federal Germany are the subject of comparison. However, within the scope of this article, as far as we can determine, an issue that has not been addressed until now is being examined. The Federal Republic of Germany has a federative structure and Article 140 of the Federal Constitution grants the right of autonomy to religious communities. The reflection of this right in practice is that the Catholic and Protestant churches, which constitute the largest religious community, have developed a church labour law separate from the general labour law over the years. In this study, it is tried to be revealed in the light of current high judicial decisions whether the employees in the workplaces affiliated with the church, have the right to strike which has been increasingly discussed since the beginning of the 2000s. As it is known, the right to strike is a constitutionally guaranteed right in the Federal Republic of Germany, as a continuation of the right to coalition, which is regulated in the 3rd paragraph of Article 9 of the Constitution. Considering that the number of workers affiliated with the church exceeds 1.8 million people, it is seen that the issue does not concern a very limited number of workers