Part-time work in Türkiye: the part-time employee’s rights and timesheet

What is a part-time contract?

If the employee’s normal weekly working time is set substantially lower than that of a full-time comparable worker, the contract is a part-time employment contract (art. 13). The comparable worker is a full-time employee doing the same or similar work at the workplace; if there is none, a full-time employee doing similar work in that line of business is used.

The limit of “substantially lower” is set in the regulation on part-time contracts as up to two thirds of the comparable worker’s working time. Against a 45-hour comparable, that is 30 hours.

Rights: equal treatment and pro-rata pay

• No different treatment. Unless there is a reason justifying it, a part-time employee may not be treated differently from a full-time comparable solely because the contract is part-time (art. 13, art. 5).
• Pro-rata payment. Divisible pay-related benefits (e.g. bonuses) are paid in proportion to hours worked compared with the full-time comparable (art. 13).
• Transfer requests. When a suitable vacancy exists, requests to move from part-time to full-time or the reverse are taken into account by the employer, and vacancies are announced in time (art. 13).

The part-time employee’s timesheet

Two pieces of information are essential in a part-time timesheet: contractual weekly hours and which days of the week are worked. Without both, neither overtime nor short time is calculated correctly.

Source: Labour Law 4857 art. 41. Work beyond contractual hours does not count towards the 270-hour annual overtime cap.

Example. An employee contracted for 25 hours a week at 100 TL an hour worked 31 hours one week. The 6 hours above 25 are work beyond contractual hours: 6 × 125 = 750 TL. If the employee prefers, they can take 1 hour 15 minutes of time off for each hour instead, 7 hours 30 minutes in total.

If contractual hours are not recorded

If contractual hours are left blank in the timesheet system, the system usually assumes 45 hours. Under that assumption a part-time employee’s hours between 25 and 45 never show a premium: a silent underpayment against the employee. The field should be filled in when the employee is added.

Social security premium days

In SGK (social security) practice, the premium days reported for a part-time employee are found by dividing the month’s total working hours by 7.5, and the missing days are reported with the “part-time employment” reason. The details of the declaration are your accountant’s job; the timesheet’s job is to give the total hours correctly.

In our workforce management system a new employee cannot be added from the screen without contractual weekly hours; overtime is split into the +25% and +50% bands using those hours, and employees with no hours recorded are counted on the manager dashboard. Details: timesheet software.

This guide is for information only and is not legal or payroll advice. Your collective agreement or employment contract may contain more favourable terms.