Turkish Labor Law
Most employers impacted by the virus applied to ISKUR for short-term work allowance in March and have continued short-term work in April and May. Within the applications of short-term work, there are certain questions that need clarifications: Are all the workers work hours reduced within the scope of the short work? Is it possible for some of the workers to work regular hours within a workplace that receives short-term work allowance? Can there be different work hours for different departments?
What is Short-Term Work Allowance?
To recap, short work allowance is an economic support by ISKUR for employers who struggle to pay their workers at a time of complete halt of businesses or reduced operations. ISKUR pays for the unworked time while the employer pays for the actual worked time. For more employers to qualify for short-term work, ISKUR made some adjustments on the criteria required.
For the workplaces to qualify for short-term work allowance, the work hours should have been reduced by ⅓. For example, the regular 45 hour work week or 225 hour work month need to be reduced to 30 hours per week and 150 hours per month.
For the workplaces that completely halted operations, employers requested short term work for the workers who could not work the entire month. For the workplaces that reduced work hours due to diminishing workload, employers applied for short-term work allowance so that workers are compensated by ISKUR for the time unworked.
For ISKUR to pay for short-term work allowance to the workers, employers need to submit a payroll table of the unworked hours/days for each worker.
Can Short-Term Work Be Department Specific?
In some workplaces, there could be one department that halted work, while others are still working business as usual. For example, in retail sector, there are a lot of stores that closed down and the employees stopped work. Therefore, all their wage will be paid as short-term work allowance. On the other hand, the online sales departments might have worked even longer than the usual work hours. For such differences between departments, employers can pay salaries as per normal and request for short-term work allowance for the departments that closed down or reduced work hours.
Different Work Hours Based on Worker
Just like departments operating for different hours, workers can be working different hours. According to the work s/he does and the responsibility level, the workers can differ from one another. One criteria for short-term work allowance is the ⅓ work hour reduction. The maximum work reduction should not exceed ⅓ of the regular work hours. Instead of 45 hours, a worker can be working 20 hours, another worker 30 hours. As long as it doesn’t exceed 30 hours, it meets the criteria for short term work.
While all the workers working different hours for the same employer are to be reported to ISKUR, the unworked hours should be reported in detail in a payroll table.
