Finance Ministry officials found that total payments made to union leadership accounted for 66 percent of unions’ operating budgets in some years. In some cases the family members of union management were discovered to be employed by the unions at high wages. The ministry also discovered significant irregularities in real estate procurement by the unions: Some unions broke the ban on commercial activities, the audits revealed, while some management paid their private electricity bills from their unions’ coffers For instance, ministry officials discovered that that the management of the Road Construction Workers Union, a member of the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Türk-İş), received travel payments for each day in a year. The president and vice presidents were reimbursed for their travel expenses for 377 days during the span of a year, whereas the Law on Travel Expenses, which applies to all civil servants, clearly limits the maximum number of days that a union member can be reimbursed for travel in a year to 180.
Union leaders also drew harsh criticism for commanding high service allowances, a sum of money they are paid every three years to recompense for their service in their leadership positions. For instance, the service allowances paid to top management at the Turkish Energy, Water and Gas Workers’ Union (Tes-İş) were on average TL 223,000 in 2006, an amount unlikely to be earned by a worker even in 25 years of working. Similarly, metal industry workers’ union Türk Metal management was also paid more than TL 200,000 apiece.
Mustafa Özbek, the former chairman of the union, who was arrested as part of the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, received TL 233,000 as a service allowances in 2003. Though high, these service allowances do not include union leaders’ salaries, travel expenses, bonuses and miscellaneous payments.
According to the ministry audits, in some years the amount paid out to the management accounted for 66 percent of unions’ total expenses. As a main cause of these huge irregularities in unions’ finances, the ministry officials pointed to the Law on Labor Unions, which leaves financial audits of the unions to an inspection council established inside the union.
