Making the opening speech of the program, Hak-İş and Hizmet-İş Chairman Mahmut Arslan drew attention to the fact that the founding periods of Hak-İş and Hizmet-İş coincided with a mixed period in Turkey and underlined that there were struggles in every period on the way started with basmala.
Noting that there is no international power behind Hak-İş and Hizmet-İş, Arslan stated that they have come to this day with the efforts of the members, and said, “A short time after its establishment, Hak-İş also received a great blow in the September 12 coup. Despite this, we got back on our feet in 1980. Since its establishment, we have become Turkey's largest union today by putting new ones on top of the previous one in each statistic.”
THE PROCESS REGARDING TEMPORARY SEASONAL WORKERS WILL BE AT THE ASSEMBLY NEXT WEEK
Stating that there are many problems in working life, Arslan stated that they have found solutions to the problems so far and underlined that they will offer solutions from now on. Arslan said, “We continue to work on the participation of the local administrations to the Public Framework Protocol. Minister stated that the Public Framework Protocol covers the entire public. We talked to the minister about the staffing problem of temporary and seasonal workers in the Public Framework Protocol, and the issue of hiring over 100,000 subcontracted workers working in State Economic Enterprises (KİT) that could not get a staff. I must give the good news that the regulation regarding temporary seasonal workers will come to the Parliament in the coming weeks.”
A FAIR TAX SYSTEM MUST BE APPLIED
Stating that a regulation in the tax system is necessary, Arslan pointed out that the tax system should be fair and said, “Today, we have not been able to convey our tax-related requests to the Minister of Finance for a year, in this period when the employees are really in trouble. In this regard, we are waiting in line to convey our work to the Minister. We think that until a fair regulation on taxation comes, the taxes on workers should be limited to 10 percent. While the share of labor from capital decreases, capital’s share increases. This shows that workers are getting poorer. There is a very serious going backwards here. The pandemic affected everyone, but as capital continued to grow, workers shrank. We need to find a solution to this problem. A truly equitable system should be introduced.”