New Regulation on Employer Premium of Unemployment Insurance

As of 01.01.2019, a new application of incentive has started with “Communique on Procedures and Principles Regarding the Benefit from Employer’s Share Incentive of Unemployment Insurance Premium in Work Places Which Are Classified as Very Dangerous and Have More Than 10 Employees” (the “Communique”) which was published on 31.12.2018, in the 4th Recurrent Official Gazette. According to the Law on Occupational Health and Security numbered 6331, workplaces which are considered as very dangerous and have a minimum of 10 employees will receive a premium incentive for a period of 3 years, if there has been no occupational accident resulting in death or incapacity for the last three years.

Briefly, conditions to benefit from the incentive for the employers are juxtaposed in the Communique as below:

• Employer (within the scope of the Law numbered 6331) shall be considered as very dangerous;
• Employer shall have minimum 10 employees;
• In the period of January 2016 – December 2018, there shall be no occupational accident resulting in death or incapacity;
• Occupational security expert or workplace doctor of the relevant workplace shall have an agreement with authorized institutions or associations.

For the workplaces which ensure above conditions, half of the unemployment insurance premium will not be charged from the employer by paying less premiums for per employee between 25,58 TL and 191,85 TL. Incentive is calculated over %1 of the income as basic to premium.

It also needs to be stated that employers who are benefiting from the premium support under the law numbered 2828, or other insurance premium incentives, support and discounts, cannot benefit from the related incentive for the same employee.

The companies established following the dates stated above (as of February 2016) shall benefit from the incentive as of January 1, 2020 in case no workplace accident occurs for three years. Besides, no accident that leads death or incapacity to work shall occur for the following 3 years for a workplace that is already benefitting from the incentive to continue benefiting.

The total count of employees registered under 4/a shall be considered for the workplaces titled as “high dangerous status” in calculation of the employee number. If there are any contractor-subcontractor link, then the subcontractors’ employees count shall not be included to the total employee count of the contractor.

Excluding the ones that could not cover the abovementioned conditions to benefit from the incentive, there is no provision of application for the employers to benefit from the incentives. However, in case a workplace loses the right to benefit from a specific incentive and wished to benefit from the same incentive again, then an additional application is necessary. Since all of the workplace accidents are notified to the SSI, once the application to benefit from the incentive is applied, the SSI will evaluate the eligibility of the workplace automatically.

Regardless of the details of the incentive applications and the clauses to be forbidden to benefit from the incentives are detailed thoroughly in the Communique, it shall be noted that the workplaces are obligated to notify the authority, if a workplace accident occurs and/or the danger level of the workplace faces an amendment. If not, administrative penalties and cancellation of incentive application will be conducted.

You may access the full Turkish text of the Communique via this link

You may reach the “Communique on Danger Levels of Workplaces regarding Work Health & Safety” to determine the danger class of your workplace.