established in written form and based on the principle of fulfill-ing the work of the employee at home or out of the workplace with the help of technological communication tools within the scope of work organisation created by the employer.
Remote work (or telework, telecommuting) is a broad con-cept that includes working relations both made as working from home and both as working outside of the workplace with tech-nological communication tools.
Remote work can be defined as performing any work for a workplace from outside, remotely by using communication
and/or telecommunication tools. What is important when work-ing remotely is that the job is to be performed in a different place than the actual workplace by the means of technology.
Remote work is essentially the fulfilment of the work rela-tionship and the worker’s duties and responsibilities outside the workplace, in another place where the employer has given his consent, usually at the worker’s home in practice. For this rea-son, the rights of the employee such as wage which is arising from the employment contract shall continue during remote working.
In the employment contract; the description of the job, the way of doing it, the duration and place of the work, the matters regarding the payment of wages and additional benefits, the equipment provided by the employer and the obligations regard-ing employee protection, the employer’s communication with the worker, and the provisions regarding general and special working conditions shall be defined.
The act of working at home is performed outside the work-place where the main work is done, physically away from the supervision and control of the employer.
An amendment is being done at the Article 14 of the La-bour Code No. 4857 with the Act No. 6715 regarding Amend-ments on the Labour Code and Turkish Labour and Employ-ment Agency Act. With the aforeEmploy-mentioned amendEmploy-ment, the employee is being entitled to be able to fulfil his/her perform-ance of work from outside the working areas such as offices, bureaus, factories or similar places which are provided by the employer.
Remote work is regulated in the Turkish legislation as to include “working at home” and “teleworking”. From these modes of work, the history of “working at home” goes back a long way. Today, home-based work is mostly done in the form of home-based work in business areas such as textile, carpet weaving, packaging, which are all businesses generally based on manual labour. On the other hand, teleworking, as another type of remote work, is a relatively new flexible work relations, as it emerged with the widespread use of technological communica-tion devices in the recent decades.
Although it has been a type of work that has been practiced for a long time, home work has become widespread especially in the world and in Turkey in the recent years. Especially in the Global Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic process, it is seen that working at home has become widespread and is generally ac-cepted by both the employee and the employer as a new stan-dard.
According to the joint decision of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Ser-vices, and the Ministry of Industry and Technology, the oppor-tunity to work from home is being brought for employees of the companies working within techno-parks and for companies working at R&D and design centres. With this temporary oppor-tunity that has lasted for two months, the employers who are working in these centres are being entitled to work remotely.
The companies working at techno-parks and R&D and design centres will inform the Ministry of Industry and Technology monthly on the number of personnel they deem suitable for working from home. Thus, the companies will continue to
bene-fit from the discounts and incentives until the end of the calen-dar month of April 2020.
It is possible to work from home, especially for personnel who have the opportunity to work from home during epidemic periods as to comply with occupational health and safety rules.
Issues such as working conditions and occupational health and safety can be regulated in the “Remote Work Protocol” for the staff who will work from home on some days of the work week.
These types of works are rather professions that are suitable for working from home using technology such professions as text preparation, documentation, translations, programming, accounting and financial consultancy services, tax consultancy, business and social security consultancy, call services, telemar-keting, consultancy and banking.
The Covid-19 process not only shows the importance and convenience of working from home, but also offers the em-ployee the opportunity to fulfill the obligations arising from the employment contract outside the office. For this reason, workers who work remotely cannot be subjected to different operations compared to the peer workers, solely due to the nature of the employment contract, unless there is a fundamental reason.
While making the remote work, it is not possible for the em-ployer to enforce and inspect the provisions of the Labour Law regarding work periods such as daily and weekly working hours, rest breaks, night work, working on holidays and overwork.
One of the most important issues that the employer should pay attention to in the relationship of remote work is the occu-pational health and safety measures. Because, on the one hand,
the employee works outside the workplace belonging to the employer, outside his/her control area, but on the other hand, he works within his work organization and often with the tools and equipment he/she supplies. In remote work at home, the possi-bility of arranging the employer and directly supervising the worker disappears.
In terms of occupational health and safety, the employer is obliged to inform the employee about occupational health and safety measures, to provide the necessary training, to provide health surveillance and to take necessary occupational safety precautions regarding the equipment he/she provides, taking into account the nature of the work the employee is to be work-ing on within a remote workwork-ing relationship.
In this regard, one of it is utmost importance in the remote work relationship for the employer to give the employee the necessary training, to provide health surveillance and to take the necessary safety precautions regarding the equipment he/she provides. In particular, training and information should be given about the use and safety of equipment delivered to the worker and this situation should be written form.
To put it more clearly, the employee should be informed about occupational health and safety measures, the employee should be reminded that his/her responsibilities continue in terms of occupa-tional health and safety during remote work, attention should be paid to the training of the work tools to be used during remote work, the work environment will not be compromising the health and safety of the worker. Employees should be warned about the proper form and surveillance of the working environment and the execution of surveillance must be done.
In case of an accident at the place of working remotely, there is the risk of this accident to be regarded as work accident.
However, here, there will be hesitations about which part of the employee’s house will be considered as workplace and which part will be accepted outside the workplace. This situation will affect whether the accident to be counted as a work accident or not. Occupational accidents are defined as accidents and losses that will occur during the work or the employee is in the work-place or in the related work-places of the workwork-place. If the employee is normally working in the office but going to work from home even for a limited period, the accident which occurs in home will be evaluated by checking at the work and whether it is re-lated to work. For example, if the worker who will work at home for one-day within a week will have an accident by the burning of the computer that is being delivered by the employer while working at home, this accident will be regarded as work accident and the employer will be responsible from it However, the employer will not be held responsible if the person working at home is damaged due to any action not related to the work that is being expected from him.
Factors to be Included in the Employment Contract Re-garding the Remote Work
1. Description of the job 2. How the job is done 3. Duration and place of work
4. Issues related to wages and payment of wages
5. Equipment provided by the employer and provisions for their protection
6. Employer’s communication mediums with the employee 7. General and special working conditions.
Workers in remote work cannot be subjected to different treatment compared to the precedent due to the nature of the employment contract, unless there is a substantial cause. The employer is obliged to inform the employee about occupational health and safety measures, to provide the necessary training, to provide health surveillance and to take the necessary occupa-tional safety measures regarding the equipment he/she provides by taking into account the nature of the work done by the em-ployee who is working in distance.
The employer is responsible for taking the necessary pre-cautions for occupational health and safety of the employee according to the type of work done by the employee during re-mote working hours and to inform the employee in this regard.
According to the Turkish Labour Code No. 4857, the employer is responsible for meeting the conditions listed below regarding the occupational health and safety of personnel subject to re-mote work:
1. To inform the employee.
2. To provide necessary training on occupational health and safety.
3. Providing health surveillance to the employee.
4. The employer is obliged to take necessary occupational safety and precautions regarding the equipment provided for the job.
III. SORULARLA UZAKTAN/EVDEN ÇALIŞMA