Extended Summary

Collective bargaining agreements aim to establish a working environment in mutual understanding and labour peace by ensuring cooperation between workers and employers during the continuation of the agreement. Within this working environment provided by the collective labour agreement, it is possible to carry out the work in the best way without stopping and to provide the social, economic and health needs of the workers in the best way. The parties do not have the right to request a change or revision of the labour conditions by raising a conflict of interest during the contract period. Otherwise, the aim of ensuring labour peace will not be achieved.
With the signing of the collective labour agreement, the parties are under the peace obligation, which expresses the obligation to comply with labour peace and not to resort to pressure tools such as strikes, lockouts and boycotts. The obligation of stability expresses the obligation to resolve disputes that may arise between the parties during the term of the collective labour agreement by mutual negotiation or judicial remedy without resorting to collective labour struggle. Within the scope of the obligation to maintain peace, the parties to the collective labour agreement are under the obligation not to resort directly or indirectly to strikes and lock-outs in order to change the content or terminate the operation of the collective labour agreement during the term of the collective labour agreement.
The peace obligation excludes labour strife for a certain period of time. While the parties to the collective bargaining agreement are forced to resolve disputes that arise during this period by peaceful means, this situation also causes a tendency to reduce the number of strikes. In other words, in general, it can be stated that the peace obligation has a strike-reducing effect. The reason for this is that the peace obligation forces the parties to the collective labour agreement to develop a dispute culture instead of a strike culture.
The peace obligation is divided into absolute peace obligation and relative peace obligation. The absolute peace obligation establishes an absolute prohibition of strikes and lock-outs within the period of the collective bargaining agreement and does not allow strikes and lock-outs not only in matters regulated in the collective bargaining agreement, but also in matters not regulated in the collective bargaining agreement. In this context, the absolute peace obligation requires the peaceful settlement of disputes arising between the parties, whether or not they are related to the provisions of the collective labour agreement, during the effective period of the collective labour agreement.
The relative peace obligation, on the other hand, states that strikes and lock-outs cannot be resorted to on the issues regulated in the collective labour agreement during the effective period of the collective labour agreement. Therefore, it is possible to resort to strike and lockout on issues that are not regulated in the collective labour agreement. When the legal regulations in Turkish law are analysed, both Article 54 of the Constitution and Articles 58/2 and 59/2 of the Law No. 6356 stipulate that strikes and lockouts can only be resorted to in case of interest disputes arising during the conclusion of the collective bargaining agreement. The legislator considers strikes and lockouts after the signing of the collective labour agreement as illegal. As a result of the aforementioned regulations, it should be stated that the obligation to comply with labour peace during the collective bargaining agreement is absolute.
The employee and employer unions that are parties to the collective labour agreement or the employer who is not a member of the union are under a duty of loyalty. Since the duty of subsistence belongs only to the parties to the collective labour agreement, there is no obligation for union members or a single employee. However, although there is no direct duty of loyalty for union members, with the signing of the collective labour agreement, union members are also under the obligation to comply with the duty of loyalty to the union of which they are a member. In addition, the union, which is a party to the collective labour agreement, undertakes to act in accordance with the duty of loyalty also for its members. The parties to the collective labour agreement are under the obligation to prevent their members from starting and conducting labour struggles in order to ensure labour peace. Since the obligation to maintain peace is a part of the collective labour agreement in the sense of the law of obligations, compensation liability will arise in case of a defective violation.