THERE IS NO REAL GAIN IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING!
THERE IS ONLY MANIPULATION AND PLAYING WITH WORDS!
According to the statements made at 04.00 in the morning, the pro-government confederation, which represents the majority in public sectors, announced that CBA negotiations and talks resulted in an agreement with the Government in 11 sectors.
On the other hand, it was announced that the parties did not reach an agreement about the increase in salary so that the CBA process would be referred to the Public Officials Arbitration Board.
Before dealing with the agreement in question, we would like to underline a critical point. Unfortunately, we witnessed again that the Government ignored the laws and regulations it adopted during the collective bargaining agreement negotiations.
While all confederations should participate in the negotiations on public workers’ general financial and social rights, the Government negotiated with the confederation, which holds the majority, behind the doors last week.
While the confederations were waiting for an invitation to the meeting, which the employer would announce its third offer, and other details about the meeting, e.g., time and venue yesterday, the process was completed through negotiations between the Government and the confederations that the Government calls “my union.”
Those who could not speak in the light of day once again ignored the most fundamental rights of public workers in the dark of night.
The Memur-Sen President, who was in front of the cameras at four o’clock in the morning, tried to represent the agreement as a success. He vaguely referred to its provisions and polished it.
KESK would like to underline one obvious fact: no matter how the confederation manipulates and polishes the agreement, there is no gain and achievement in the collective bargaining regarding sectors or overall conditions. Instead, there are words only.
- The sectors submitted a total of 807 demands to the CBA table. According to the Memur Sen President’s statement at 04.00 o’clock, only 291 were reflected in the agreement.
- Although 128 of these 291 articles are said to be “new and revised” articles, it has not been explained how many of them are new and how many are revised articles.
- More importantly, although the statement says that “we have achieved significant gains in the sectors,” he did not give a single example.
We want to underline one key point: There is no consensus on the collective bargaining agreement. Therefore, the Arbitration Committee process will examine the part on salary increase and the entire section of the collective bargaining agreement on financial and social rights covering all public workers.
Despite this, both the President of the pro-government confederation and the Ministry of Labour made confusing or inaccurate statements about the general CBA and posted tweets. For example, it is mentioned that there is a critical achievement scale with a total of 341 items, 291 of which are related to sectors, and 50 are associated with all public workers.
Furthermore, it is claimed that “There are sections in which many employees in many positions such as chiefs, managers, branch managers, deputy managers, engineers, architects, veterinarians, non-medical personnel, technicians and technicians are also considered in the provision of collective bargaining.” However, there is not a single sentence about what these sections are and what their content is.
Instead, the pro-government confederation represented the following case as “a huge victory and success”: the President promised to enlarge the scope of benefits to any public employees (known as 3600 additional indicators) when s/he reaches 1st degree during the pre-election campaigns. However, the Minister of Labour suggested postponing the realisation of this promise in the second meeting of the CBA.” The confederation expects public employees to believe in this unreal success story.
In short, it is seen that no significant gain has been achieved in terms of the sectors in the agreement, yet there are attempts to polish the agreement and present it as a good one via tweets and statements. If there had been any significant financial, social, and professional gain in the agreement, these people would have organised more and more extensive public events to publicise them in the daytime.
While they know the fact that the agreement, covering general financial and social rights, will be referred to the Arbitration Board, they are saying that “we have obtained important titles in the collective agreement provision” to soften the reaction of the public workers such as chiefs, engineers and technicians that form a considerable percent of public workers. In fact, there is an attempt to manipulate public workers by creating unreal hopes and expectations and referring to vague benefits.
On the other hand, apart from these words, there is no single title that public workers say about a single financial and social right in general, “we have reached a consensus, or at least ” we believe that we will reach an agreement before the Arbitration Board.”
For example, there is no reference to the following issues that all confederations have in their CBA proposal document:
- There is not a single sentence related to rent allowance. There is not a single sentence about financial aid for nursery services.
- There is not a single sentence about ending the Income Tax injustice that devours our salaries.
- There is no single sentence regarding the reflection of all additional payments under any name to our root salary and pension.
- There is no single sentence about the 2.5 million public worker retirees who suffer from poverty.
- There is no single sentence about ending precarious employment and changing the contract of precarious employees to a permanent one.
- There is no sentence regarding the abolition of the interview promised by the President during the pre-election campaign.
- There is no single sentence about sexism, discrimination, mobbing, and harassment of women public workers in working life.
Most importantly, there is not a single sentence about a Democratic Labor Law that shall secure the True Collective Bargaining System with the Right to Strike. Instead, it is stated that work will be carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour, and the ministry will invite social stakeholders to amend law no. 4688. Such a study will be carried out with a mentality that accepts the auspices of the Ministry of Labour from the beginning. It is for sure that the public and public workers will evaluate this mentality. As KESK, WE DO NOT ACCEPT this agreement that imposes misery, poverty, and insecurity on 25 million people with words only!
We will continue our struggle for a Democratic-Fair Working Life, a real collective bargaining system recognising the right to strike and a decent wage. We know that the existing system has condemned us to decisions made by the political power and the Arbitration Board of this power for years. As part of this struggle, we will continue to be the voice of 6 million public workers and pensioners in all processes, especially the Public Officials Arbitration Board process.
KESK Executive Committee