Civil Servants' Union President Ali Yalçın Calls on the Government for a Critical Collective Bargaining Agreement

ANKARA - Ali Yalçın, President of Memur-Sen, made striking statements on the 8th Term Collective Bargaining Process on NTV live broadcast. In this critical process, in which the eyes and ears of approximately 4 million civil servants and more than 2 million retired civil servants are on, Yalçın shared the demands of the union and expectations from the public employer with the public in detail. The main topics of the agenda were the victimization caused by the targeted inflation, the wage gap between public workers and civil servants, and the concrete raise proposals of Memur-Sen.

Facts Instead of Targeted Inflation

Ali Yalçın stated that the determination of raise rates in collective agreements based on targeted inflation is the biggest problem that constantly reduces the purchasing power of civil servants. Stating that the Central Bank's inflation targets have never been met so far, Yalçın argued that this situation should be addressed with concrete examples. "When we were at the table in 2024, the inflation target for 2024 was 33%. We were then offered 25 percent, not even 33 percent. While we expected inflation to be 33 percent in 2024, inflation was 44.38 percent," he said, drawing attention to the bitter experience of the past. Therefore, at the table, "we have to talk about market realities and inflation on the ground," he said.

Civil Servant-Worker Salary Gap and Wage Injustice

Stating that the wage injustice among public employees seriously damages the working peace, Yalçın emphasized that the President's approach that "the lowest civil servant salary will be above the lowest worker salary in the public sector" should be adopted as a basic criterion during the improvement he made in 2023. He revealed the victimization experienced by the personnel in different statuses doing the same job with a striking example: "Two security guards working in front of the university have different statuses. One is a civil servant and the other a worker... One gets 100 liras a day for overtime and the other gets 1500 liras. There is a 15-fold gap. This is not something that can happen."

Memur-Sen's Concrete Raise and Social Rights Proposals

Yalcin stated that the proposals brought by Memur-Sen to the collective bargaining table are aimed at compensating the losses of civil servants. Stating that the gap between the lowest civil servant salary and pension should be narrowed, Yalçın announced that they are proposing a base salary increase of 10,000 TL to compensate for the 8,077 TL increase that is not reflected. In addition, Memur-Sen's raise proposals for the years 2025, 2026 and 2027 have also been finalized:

• For 2025: 10,000 TL base salary improvement and 25% proportional increase.

• For the first 6 months of 2026: 20% proportional increase.

• For 2027: 7,500 TL base salary improvement and 20% proportional increase.

Making important demands on social rights, Yalçın stated that in line with the "Year of the Family" concept, they want the spousal allowance to be increased to 11,710 liras, and the child allowance to be increased to 5,850 liras per child for two children and 8,780 liras for three children.

3600 Additional Indicator and Other Important Issues

Mentioning the victimization caused by the 3600 Supplementary Indicator regulation, which could not be implemented although it was agreed to be completed in the last collective agreement, Yalçın emphasized that this problem, which covers approximately 470 thousand public servants who have reached the first degree, should be solved urgently.

Also reacting to the compression of the collective bargaining process into a short period of only one month, Yalçın said that the problems of professional groups with unique problems such as engineers, technical services class, branch managers and academicians should also be addressed at the table. Reiterating the demand for the transfer of the auxiliary services class to the general administrative services class, Yalçın stated that they expect the government to come to the table with an offer that takes into account market realities, is fair and will ensure labor peace.