The process is illegal.
Minimum The Salary Determination Commission began its meetings to determine the minimum wage for the year 2023. This year the tradition of the past has been broken and the meetings that workers and employers had to host have been suppressed. It has been announced that for now there will be two meetings, sponsored by the Ministry of Labor, for the 2023 minimum wage, which the parties want to determine quickly.
mustafa turkel
YELLOW ENVELOPE WITHOUT NEGOTIATION
Although this year the tradition in the system for determining the minimum wage has been broken, it has been affirmed that the meetings of the commission are not really a negotiating table. Tekgıda-İş union president Mustafa Türkel, who served as Türk-İş’s representative on the Minimum Wage Determination Commission for years, said: “Bargaining always turns outward. We say what we think in meetings. At the last meeting, a yellow envelope arrives on the table. The figure inside the envelope is voted on by the commission. This is how the minimum wage has been determined for years. Saying that no real negotiations could be mentioned in the commission so far, Türkel expressed that he hoped this year’s meeting would take place in a real negotiation environment. Turkel’s statement to SÖZCÜ is not a secret. In recent years, the ‘yellow envelope’ has manifested itself in the form of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with the last word on the minimum wage. However, the President has no legal authority in this regard. Although the Commission for the Determination of the Minimum Wage was attached to the Presidency with a Presidential Decree issued in 2018, article 39 of the minimum wage of Law No. 4857 mandates: “The decisions of the commission are final.”
The trick of electoral periods
Working life expert and METU professor Yıldırım Koç, who worked for Türk-İş for many years, also stated that the minimum wage is mainly determined by governments. The system, in which AKP Chairman and Chairman Erdoğan recently had the last word, is clearly against the law. Noting that the minimum wage determination process is used as a trump card during election periods, Yıldırım Koç said, “The president has no authority in this matter. He is not part of the commission. This is clearly evidenced in the Labor Law No. 4857.”
The law cannot be regulated in this way.
Although the second paragraph of article 39 of the Labor Law, which regulates the components of the commission and its operation, was repealed by Decree and the commission was subordinated to the Presidency by Presidential Decree, according to the Constitution, the issues are clearly regulated in The law cannot be regulated by a decree.