The total cost of a collective bargaining agreement signed between the government and civil servants' labor unions before the Eid al-Fitr holiday is TL 8 billion -- not TL 5 billion, as originally estimated -- according to an announcement earlier this month.
Salary increases for government workers drove up the budgetary cost of the agreement after the unions put heavy pressure on the administration during negotiations.
Under the terms of the new agreement, all workers in the public sector will see their base salaries increase by TL 175. After taxes and retirement fund contributions, the raise works out to TL 123 -- a boost that satisfied lower paid civil servants and pensioners but disappointed the upper echelons of the civil service. For civil servants making TL 3,000, the raise amounted to a mere 2 percent.
Turkey's more than 1.9 million retired civil servants did better than the average, as did Turkey's public school teachers. Retirees' monthly pension benefits will rise TL 146 net. The rise in the base salaries impacted retirement bonuses as well: retired civil servants -- from teachers to undersecretaries and agency directors -- who worked for 30 years by Jan. 1, 2014, will get a retirement bonus of over TL 5,250.
Public sector teachers, in addition to the net raise of TL 123, won a special “75+75” service compensation. In January 2014 teachers will get a bonus in two payments of TL 75, one in January and another in June.
Factoring in the service compensation, teachers will get a salary raise of TL 273 a month in 2013. On top of that, the annual preparation bonus teachers receive will rise from TL 740 to TL 850 in 2014.
Under the new agreement, firefighters will also get a salary increase, in addition to hazard pay during periods when fires are more common.
Günay Kaya, deputy chairman of the Civil Servants' Trade Union (Memur-Sen), has said that 17,000 forest workers will get a bonus of TL 456 for firefighting work over the seven months from May to November.
Undersecretaries fared the worst in the new agreement, losing a total of TL 430 in bonuses that were tied to a salary increase proposal that was rejected in the final draft.
In total, 85 percent of civil servants earn under TL 2,700 per month.
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Source : worldbulletin.net
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