An appeal filed by business owners against the north’s new minimum wage was rejected by the north’s minimum wage determination commission on Monday.
The commission convened on Monday to discuss the appeal, with Cyprus Turkish employers’ federation representative Cengiz Alp saying before the meeting that business owners had been “brought to a dead end” by rising wages, which had become “unpayable”.
“We are sitting at this table with a 40-year-old minimum wage law. Here we are again. Employers have reached a dead end due to inflation,” he said, adding that a “new method” must be sought to determine the minimum wage in the north.
He said his union had written to the ‘labour ministry’ twice asking for “the necessary data” to be sent to them, but that they had not received it.
“We do not accept this figure. No ground has been created for us to discuss this. We say no to this minimum wage,” he said.
The way the north’s minimum wage determination commission works is that representatives of employers, employees, and the ‘labour minister’ of the day convene to discuss the minimum wage, and if two of the three parties agree, a deal is considered to have been reached.
As such, given that the employees and incumbent ‘minister’ Sadik Gardiyanoglu had already agreed on the new minimum wage, they agreed once again on Monday, and thus the previously set gross figure of 40,436TL was allowed to stand.
Gardiyanoglu said the ‘government’ is now hard at work to attempt to bring down the north’s high cost of living, which has predicated the rising minimum wage, adding that the ‘government’ is “showing serious sensitivity on the issue”.
The new minimum wage’s ratification means that minimum wage workers in the north will receive for September more money than their counterparts in the Republic, with the gross figure of 40,436TL being worth €1,060 – higher than the Republic’s figure of €1,000 exactly.
The net figure, 35,180TL, is worth €921, and is also higher than the Republic’s net minimum wage of €885.
While this is the case, the Turkish Lira’s value is continuing to decline, with both figures’ euro value having fallen by €6 since they were initially set on September 19.
