Dear Public Employees and Retirees,
Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations, a fundamental issue for all of us, will start on August 1.
At the end of the previous six negotiations, we, as public employees, and retirees, always lost our rights and suffered from the signed agreement.
Those who are accepted public employees’ “official representatives” at the negotiation table preferred not to dust off the Government and to praise it instead of solving our problems that reached a severe level.
These “representatives” signed agreements based on the Turkish Statistical Institute’s figures that were put in front of them and swallowed at least half of the actual inflation we faced in the kitchen. Instead of defending our rights, they continued to be more royalist than the king in these negotiations. Moreover, they made fun of all of us without getting blushed by saying, “The agreement was a historical success; we got what we deserved from the budget; we got our share from prosperity.”
Now is the time for all of us to decide!
Either we will watch this play, which makes us poorer every day, being staged once more. Or we will stand should shoulder to end this game and to win an indisputable right to collective bargaining with the right to a strike, to get a decent wage, and to benefit from job security!
The government representatives say, “We are breaking records in growth, the shelves are full, and the world is jealous of us.“ However, there is growth in our sufferings, problems, poverty, and debts only.
Every day we wake up with new news that prices are rising. The shelves are full, but our pockets are empty. We walk around the markets like museums. We look at the costs and go out.
One in three workers earns a minimum wage below the hunger limit. The wages of the rest of the workers are getting closer to the minimum wage every day. 10 million retirees get a salary below the hunger limit. This is the living standard that the Government offers to us.
Why would anyone be jealous of such a country? We do not know. Of course, some people and groups have become richer in this country. The wealth of the happy minority, fed by interest and rent, is growing.
Dollar billionaires, who make up 1% of the population but hold 54% of the national wealth, are making more and more money.
Companies and bosses that have been benefiting from incentives for years, tax amnesties, and do not pay taxes even as much as their minimum wage is growing.
As we become poorer, these people and groups become richer.
As workers and public employees, we suffer from the costs of any economic crisis, pandemic, and earthquake.
As a result of the taxes deducted from our salaries and wages and the increasing indirect taxes such as VAT and SCT, which we pay at the same rate as the rich in every product we consume, the burden of the economic crisis falls on us.
Our purchasing power is diminishing every day. Our salaries, our wages are evaporating.
Despite these facts, the public authorities still make the following propaganda “We did not crush the worker, the civil servant, the pensioner under the minimum wage.” However, we are oppressed not by the fake inflation figures of the Turkish Statistical Institute, which has announced pre-fixed rates upon the Government’s instruction for years, but by the actual inflation we experience, the cost of living.
Last year, they launched a new game: “welfare share.”
For the first six months of 2022, they said, “We are giving a 2.5% welfare share.” But they did not keep their promise. Even after the 2.5% increase in our wages, they deducted this 2.5% increase from the six-month inflation gap.
Before the elections, they said, “We will increase the lowest civil servant salary to 22 thousand TL, and we will also reflect the increase to pensioners.”
But they did not keep their promise again. They increased the root (base) salary of 4 million public workers by 17.55%, which is the sum of the inflation differential and the collective bargaining increase. Since they do not reflect this increase in our base salary, they said “additional” to the rise of 8.077 TL, which is not reflected in any item from our pension, compensation, spouse, and child benefit to additional course fees and our working fund share.
Regarding the pensioners, the public authorities announced, “There is no extra 8,077 TL for you, be satisfied with an increase of 25%.” It should be noted that two of the three pensioners received the lowest salary, which was 7,500 TL, thanks to the additional contribution from the treasury.
We know that public authorities gave a small amount to us and got more and more through taxes.
The only solution is to increase the struggle for a decent wage.
We do not want to be equalized in poverty and hunger but to be united in the prosperity we deserve.
We do not want a favour but a proper collective bargaining mechanism recognizing the right to a strike!
We do not want laws unilaterally enacted by the Government but a democratic working life in which the public workers of confederations and trade unions will have a say and a decision.
We call on all public workers and pensioners to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for wages, secure jobs, and a secure future in the forthcoming collective bargaining process against this system of poverty and misery that has caused us all to lose for years.
WE DEMAND DECENT WAGES,
JOB SECURITY FOR A BETTER FUTURE
Moreover, our demands include:
- Real Collective Bargaining System, in which all issues related to professional life shall be discussed, each union will sign a collective agreement on behalf of its members, and the strike, which is our constitutional right, to be secured,
- Termination of all kinds of precarious employment such as contracted, subcontracted, paid, acting, and administrative service contract. All public employees must have a secure and permanent position,
- Raising the minimum wage of public workers above the poverty line,
- Increase the minimum pension to 15 thousand TL as of July 2023,
- All additional payments we receive under any name, such as “Additional,” “Extra,” or “on an equal basis,” shall be reflected in our pension. In other words, our pension should be calculated based on these additional payments rather than the root wage,
- There should be tax justice: everyone should pay taxes according to their income level,
- Reducing the indirect taxes taken from everything we consume, introducing a Wealth Tax to end the privileges granted to interest and wealth income,
- Arranging the amount based on the tax base not to exceed 15% per annum, fixing the tax bracket to be collected at 15%, making the application of exempting the minimum wage from tax permanent,
- Providing housing to all non-resident public workers within the scope of the right to housing and providing rental assistance until all public employees buy a house,
- Public authorities should keep their promise to cancel interviews, in fact, oral exams, in public recruitment and promotion and to give 3600 additional indicators to all public workers and pensioners with no further delay,
- Opening qualified and free kinder gardens in workplaces for the children of all employees between the ages of 0-6,
- Providing free service and lunch to all public workers, clothing and fuel aid according to the actual inflation we experience, food aid to public workers who do not have food in the workplace,
- Providing all public workers with a monthly subscription card that they will benefit from free public transport,
- Making and implementing necessary legal regulations against all kinds of discrimination, violence, harassment, and mobbing against women in workplaces,All public employees, who were unjustly dismissed from the public services by Emergency Decree Laws under the State of Emergency, must be reinstated and benefit from all their retrospective loss of rights.