It is an implement which provides an allowance to insured employees for the period that they could not work, up to 3 (three) months (can be extended up to 6 months with President's decision), if weekly working hours at a workplace is reduced temporarily by at least a third of its activities are ceased completely or partially for at least four weeks, without any continuity condition, due to general economic, sectoral, regional crisis or compulsory reasons.
Compelling reasons are periodic situations arising from external effects or situations such as earthquake, fire, flood, landslide, epidemics, mobilization; that are not caused by the employer's administration, that cannot be predicted priorly, as a result, cannot be averted, resulting to temporarily reducing working hours or cessation of the activity completely or partially.
Within this scope, The Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR) pays short term work allowance and the General Health Insurance premiums for employees.
The employer must apply to The Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR) that working periods at the workplace has decreased significantly or ceased and evaluation to be done by labor inspectors concerning that the workplace has been affected by a compelling reason. Employers can apply for short term work in electronic and written environment by filling out the short work request form and the list of information about the employees who are to do short term working. The result of the compliance audit of the labour inspectors is notified to the employer by The Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR). The employer announces the result in a place at the workplace where employees can see and informs the labour unions party to the collective bargaining agreement if any. In cases where announcements could not be done, workers subject to short term work are notified in writing. The employer whose apply is deemed suitable, updates and sends the short-term work notification list within the period notified by the Authority.
For the employee to benefit from the short-time work allowance, the employer's short-time work application is to be found suitable with the examination of the labor inspectors, the worker should be entitled to unemployment benefits in terms of the number of days of work and the duration of the unemployment insurance premium (those who have been subject to a service contract for the last 60 days before the start of the short term work, which has paid unemployment insurance premium for at least 450 days in the past three years depending on the Law No. 7226, which was accepted on 25 March and published in the Official Gazzette), the information of the worker should be included in the list of those who will participate in the short term working, following the result of the labor inspectors examination.
The following provisional article is expected to be added to the Law No. 4447. Accordingly, "TEMPORARY PROVISIONAL ARTICLE 23- For short term work applications made for compelling reasons originating from the new Coronavirus (COVID-19), valid for until 30/6/2020, the provision of fulfilling the conditions of entitlement to unemployment insurance, excluding the termination of the service contract prescribed in the third paragraph of the additional article 2, is to be implemented in the form of having an unemployment insurance premium paid for 450 days within the last three years from those who have been subjected to the service contract for the last 60 days before the short working start date. Those who do not meet this condition will continue to benefit from the short-time working allowance for the period remaining from the last unemployment benefit entitlement, in order not to exceed the short working period.
To benefit from the short-term work implements within the scope of this article, no employee should be dismissed by the employer, except for the reasons set out in the Subparagraph (II) of Article 25/1 of The Turkish Labour Law No. 4857. Applications for short term working allowance made under this article are concluded within 60 days from the date of application.
The President is authorized to extend the application date made under this article until 31/12/2020 and to differentiate the days specified in the first paragraph."
Daily short-term work allowance; It is 60% of the insured employees average daily gross earnings, calculated based on taking into account the earnings of the employee for the last twelve months. The amount of short-term work allowance calculated in this way cannot exceed 150% of the gross amount of the monthly minimum wage. Within this scope, short term work allowance can be paid between TL 1.752.40 and TL 4.380.99. The short-term work allowance is paid to the employee himself and monthly for the periods that the employee does not work.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
