‘Minimum Wage Determination Commission should convene immediately’

* Photo: DİSK

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Amid increasing inflation and decreasing purchasing power of people in Turkey, it has been recently debated whether the minimum wage will be increased again. After Minister of Labor and Social Security Vedat Bilgin, Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK) Chair Arzu Çerkezoğlu also joined the debate in a statement yesterday (March 22).

Attending the press statement of Progressive Health Workers Union in front of the Health Ministry, Çerkezoğlu requested improvement in health workers' employee personal rights and working conditions.

Calling on the Health Ministry, the Ministry of Labor and the government to take a step about the issue, she underlined that healthcare workers are forced to sustain their lives on the minimum wage, recalling that the minimum wage has been below the starvation line since the second month of the year even though the wage rise was determined in December 2021.

The DİSK Chair stressed that as a result of the price increases that entered into effect in the new year, the 50-percent increase in the minimum wage has melted. "We want the loss suffered by the minimum wage as a result of the inflation to be eliminated," she said.

Demanding an immediate meeting of the Minimum Wage Determination Commission, which has been convening once a year since 2016, Çerkezoğlu noted that "there is no legal obstacle to this" in response to government officials' remarks of '"legal amendment is needed".

Çerkezoğlu explained, "Both the Labor Law and the Regulation of the Minimum Wage Determination Commission openly say it: The minimum wage is determined for once in two years at the latest. There is no obstacle to an immediate meeting of the Minimum Wage Determination Commission or an update [in the minimum wage]. The Commission must convene upon the call of the Minister of Labor. All wages must be increased by the rate at which the minimum wage is increased. And the lowest pension must be increased to the level of the minimum wage".

It is below the starvation line

According to the February 2022 data of the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş), the starvation line of a family of four is 4,522 Turkish Lira (TRY), which is 300 TRY more than the minimum wage in Turkey. Poverty line is almost 4 times the minimum wage in the country.

In January, the starvation line was 4,249 TRY, the poverty line was 13,843 TRY and the "cost of living" of a single employee was 5,587 TRY.

According to the official statistics of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 4.81 percent monthly and by 54.44 percent annually in February 2022.

On the other hand, according to the Inflation Research Group (ENAG), an alternative platform which has been sharing consumer inflation data for some time now, the monthly inflation was 5.44 percent and annual inflation was 123.8 percent in the country in February 2022.

It used to be set twice a year

The Article 39 of the Labor Law stipulates that "the minimum wage shall be set once in two years at the latest", which shows that it is not stipulated by the law that the minimum wage is determined once a year. In fact, until 2016, the minimum wage had been set twice a year.

What needs to be done is to convene the Minimum Wage Determination Commission at the request of Minister of Labor and Social Security.

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(HA/SD)