Precarious Work in Turkish Basketball Leagues

Precarious work is not limited to certain professions or market sectors but involves many fields of work. One such area is a professional sport that has become an economic field of work on a global scale. It has done so by becoming more professional since the 19805. In the Global Dialogue Forum titled Decent Work in the World of Sports organized in 2020, the International Labor Organization (ILO) highlighted the problems of precarious work in professional sports. it emphasized the necessity of regulations to be implemented in line with the solution of the problems. in this study, the author aimed to shed light on the regulations to be promulgated regarding the problems by demonstrating the problems of precarious working in professional sports determined by the ILO (2020) in Turkish Basketball Leagues from the perspective of basketball players employed by sports clubs. in this effort, the author employed a semi-structured interview technique, one of the data collection types of qualitative research method, with ten professional basketball players employed by sports clubs in Turkish Basketball Leagues and benefited from the audio and visual materials related to the problems provided by basketball players in the interviews. Findings were reached by interpreting and summarizing the data obtained through descriptive analysis. In this context, the precarious working problems of basketball players in Turkish Basketball Leagues have given rise to wage disparities, disability and incapacity issues, unregistered and uncompensated work, occupational health and safety problems, weekend vacation, psychological harassment, discrimination, physical violence, union representation, education, uncertainty about the future, and problems related to the Covid-19 process.