Restrictions on temporary employment to be removed

ANKARA

Turkish authorities are speeding up efforts to finalize new arrangements for facilitating flexible working, including temporary employment.

Measures to be taken in that direction were discussed at the Investment Climate Improvement Coordination Board (YOİKK) meeting last week.

The first step will be the introduction of arrangements that will make it easier for companies to hire people on a temporary basis through fixed-term employment contracts. Temporary employment presently exists in the labor law but with certain restrictions.

Under the provisions of the existing law, companies are only allowed to hire people for the completion of certain projects with one or two-year contracts. The new arrangement will remove this criterion to facilitate temporary employment.

At the presentations made during the YOİKK meeting, authorities stressed that the aim of these flexible working arrangements is to boost employment among young people. They noted that there were 800,000 jobless people aged between 15 and 24.

The statement released after the YOİKK meeting said that progress has been made in identifying the necessary changes to be made to the current legislation to pave the way for remote and temporary work.

The unemployment rate inched up from 8.5 percent in May to 9.2 percent in June. The number of jobless people increased by 234,000 in a month to 3.3 million.

Youth unemployment, defined as those aged 15-24, increased by 1.7 percentage points to 17.6 percent in June. The rate was 14.8 percent for men and 23.2 percent for women.