We Demand Justice, Not Just a Pay Rise!

WE WANT JUSTICE, NOT A RAISE!

To the public

We greet with great anger and disappointment the proposal, submitted to and accepted by the Plan and Budget Committee of the Grand National Assembly by AKP and MHP deputies, for an across-the-board raise of up to 30,000 TL for senior administrators, auditors and experts.

This proposal is a regulation without moral or conscientious foundation — one that deepens injustice and inequality among public employees and entrenches the division of the people into "winners" and "losers".

The Institutionalisation of Inequality and Class Difference

The greatest contradiction of this regulation is that an additional payment most workers could not even dream of is being granted to already high-earning bureaucratic and administrative ranks — a group whose average salaries are expected to approach 130,000 TL with this raise.

While general directors, agency heads, provincial police chiefs and even staff serving in executive offices are included in the scope of this astronomical raise, the thousands of workers who pour their sweat into culture and the arts have once again been ignored.

This regulation is not merely a fiscal decision; it is the declaration of a political choice about "whose labour is valuable and whose is worthless". At a time when culture workers in orchestras, on stages, in museums, libraries and technical workshops are struggling at the hunger line or just above the poverty line, granting administrators an additional 30,000 TL is neither ethical nor conscionable.

As Kültür Emek-Sen, in line with our principle of fully independent, democratic class unionism, we stand against the economic policies and tax injustice that capital and the administration load onto the people's backs. This raise is the most concrete proof that the state's resources are being channelled only to the circles it favours.

The Situation for Artists:

While the opera, ballet, choir and theatre artists and the technical staff of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism have been struggling for years over supplementary pay indicators, personnel rights and wage justice, the administrators have chosen the path of giving "a raise to themselves".

As artists, technical crews and administrative staff, we deliver the public's cultural services under the hardest conditions — sometimes short-staffed, sometimes subjected to flexible, insecure and arbitrary performance evaluations. While many of our members await the improvement of contracted artists' personnel rights and the fulfilment of basic demands such as the 6400 supplementary pay indicator, this news of a "luxury across-the-board raise" from the government has reopened our wounds.

This situation shows plainly how much the political power values culture and the arts: art is seen either as showcase material or as the first expenditure to be sacrificed in the budget. While the artist fights for survival at the hunger line, the state administrator will live in comfort atop our cultural wealth with a 130,000 TL salary.

Kültür Emek-Sen's Clear Stance: We Will Not Step Back

As the Culture Workers' Union, unlike partisan, government-aligned unionism, we embrace independent and militant unionism. We declare once again that we will not stay silent in the face of such unilateral decisions that disregard working people.

We believe this 30,000 TL raise must be distributed across the board, equally and without discrimination, to all public employees. If the aim is to protect public servants crushed by inflation, that protection must be provided not only to the senior bureaucracy but to all public workers.

Demands:

• —Grant the 30,000 TL across-the-board additional payment to all public employees without discrimination! The scope of this unjust raise must be widened so that artists, technical staff and administrative employees — the essential elements of cultural services — are immediately included.

• —Improve the personnel rights of culture and art workers! Beginning with our artists' demand for the 6400 supplementary pay indicator, discrimination against contracted staff must end and a fair wage policy must be applied.

• —End tax injustice! The clawing back of our inflation-eroded salaries through high tax brackets must stop, and tax policies favouring administrators and capital must be changed immediately.

This raise is an indicator not only of how money, but of how power itself, is distributed. We, culture workers, will continue our struggle on de facto and legitimate ground until we win a dignified life and the due return of our labour.

Long live our organised struggle! Long live Kültür Emek-Sen!