Labor minister signals dramatic changes in job market

ANKARA

AA Photo

Labor and Social Security Minister Süleyman Soylu has signaled a series of changes in the job market, from flexible working conditions to severance payments, in a press conference with economy reporters on Jan. 28. 

“We took several steps on the road to improving flexible working conditions, but there are still miles to drive. We’ll decide whether we should take new steps or not after our talks with all stakeholders. We clearly defined our decisiveness in the government action plan and we have now assessing the public opinion,” he said. 

Soylu noted there were many flexible workers in Turkey, particularly in the IT sector, and they just wanted to both formalize and record them. 

He also said everyone should have a severance pay account and they were working on a plan to improve the system. 

Severance pay refers to compensation employers are required to provide employees whose job contract is ended due to reasons listed under Turkish Labor Law. Severance pay approximately amounts to a month of gross salary for every year that the employee was with the company.

“We are still working on the development of a severance payment fund. If a person works one day, one-day severance pay will be paid. The new fund may be like unemployment insurance. Private companies may control the savings in the fund,” he said, vowing there would be no decrease in the annual calculations based on the 30-day salary system. 

He noted this fund would also enable the country to increase savings. 

“There are many employees which want to quit their job but cannot as they want to receive their severance payment when leaving their job. There are also several employers who want to fire some of their workers due to lower productivity or something else but they cannot as they don’t want to pay severance payments. We want to find a middle way that will be best for both,” he said.