Compensation for moral damage to the employee caused by a workplace accident or an occupational disease (example of Turkey)

Abstract

Workplace accidents not only threaten the lives of workers and damage the human capital of employers, but also increase the social costs of the State. Almost all industrialized countries have introduced laws and regulations to prevent industrial accidents and occupational diseases to reduce the cost of recovering such losses. Within the framework of this article, we turned to the example of Turkey, since this issue is regulated in sufficient detail in the legislation of this State. It has been established, that the main condition for an accident to be considered workplace accident is that the employer supervises the employee. Therefore, it is not necessary that the event takes place at the time when the employee is at the workplace or as a result of the employer’s wrongful actions. The definitions of the concepts of accident at work and occupational disease, enshrined in Social Insurance and Universal Health Insurance Law have been considered. According to the provisions of the same Law, the employer is obliged to report an accident or occupational disease to the head of the Social Security Institution (SSI) within 3 days after the event. It has been studied what types of benefits the victim can expect within social insurance. It has been determined, that claims for compensation for material and moral damage, as well as compensation for deprivation of material support as a result of an accident at work or occupational disease, are brought directly to the employer, since these types of damage are not compensated under social insurance. The conditions, the fulfillment of which is necessary to bring the employer to responsibility, have been investigated. The procedure for calculating moral compensation is not enshrined at the legislative level, but it was formed by the relevant practice of the Supreme Court. The factors that the court takes into account when determining the amount of compensation have been studied