Cultural Workers' Union Declaration

CULTURE WORKERS' UNION DECLARATION

A Fair Wage and a Humane Life Is Our Demand!

To the Press and the Public

As the Culture Workers' Union, ahead of the salary-raise decision to be made in the 2026–2027 collective agreement on 15.08.2025, we must draw attention to workers' ever-deepening economic problems and voice our demand for justice loudly. The government's raises to the minimum wage and salaries do not match the real price increases of daily life, impoverishing workers further with each passing day. This not only lowers individuals' quality of life; it also threatens the general welfare and future of society.

Since the beginning of 2025, the price increases in energy, food and basic necessities in Turkey have gone far beyond the official inflation figures. While electricity rose by 10–30%, natural gas by 38% and fuel by 10–18%, food inflation reached 43.58%; vegetable prices rose by 125%, fruit by 60%, and staples such as meat and dairy saw increases exceeding 30–40%. Against this, the raises made to the minimum wage and public employees' salaries remain inadequate beside these exorbitant increases.

For July 2025, Memur-Sen, the authorised union, consented to a 5% raise. Raise rates determined entirely by the government — the 10.57% inflation difference, the "welfare share" and the like — are unacceptable. With these rates, the government has pushed public servants and pensioners below the hunger line. The pro-government union's acceptance of these raises has shown all employees, once again, whose side it is on.

The falling quality of life in the face of these increases consumes people not only materially but also spiritually. Individuals who cannot eat healthily and adequately, who struggle to meet basic needs such as housing and heating, are being pushed away from a life worthy of human dignity.

Our struggle for a humane life — for basic rights such as health, nutrition, housing and education to be provided to everyone equally and free of charge — continues and grows stronger.

The Culture Workers' Union will resolutely continue its duty of defending the people's rights and making workers' voices heard. Accordingly, our demands for the coming salary negotiations are clear:

1. The elimination of tax injustice and the removal of the tax burden on low-income workers. 2. Raises for workers designed with income losses in mind — above all to compensate for the increases in energy, food and basic necessities. 3. A fair raise based on scientific data and real inflation rates! 4. With the losses caused by the across-the-board raise plain to see, we demand that all supplementary and side payments be reflected in our pension contributions.

THE KNIFE HAS REACHED THE BONE

We, culture workers, labour day and night to keep the values of this land alive, and we will not accept our demand for a humane life being ignored. In the coming collective bargaining process, we must stand in solidarity and struggle — arm in arm with those who embrace fully independent class unionism, not pro-government unionism — in actions and events through which we will determine our own fate.

Respectfully announced to the public.

CULTURE WORKERS' UNION