Sometimes the working periods calculated by citizens employed under the Social Security Institution—through SSK, Bağkur, or the Civil Servants’ Pension Fund—and the official durations shown in records and queries differ. This discrepancy usually arises because employees count every hour spent at the workplace as working time, while a portion of those hours are not considered working time under Law No. 4857, as defined and applied by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. Below we explain which periods are accepted as working time and which are not, based on the ministry’s published guidance.
Which Periods Count as Working Time?
According to Labor Law No. 4857, as enforced by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the maximum weekly working time is 45 hours. Unless otherwise stipulated in a contract and mutually agreed upon, this 45-hour total is distributed evenly across the weekdays. However, the law also sets a hard daily limit: working time must not exceed 11 hours in a single day, because exceeding 11 hours may endanger the worker’s health. For certain occupations the legal maximum daily working time is reduced to 7.5 hours. Occupations limited to a maximum of 7.5 hours per day include:
- Work involving lead and arsenic
- Glass industry work
- Mercury industry work
- Cement industry work
- Work in gas, coke plants and thermal power stations
- Zinc industry work
- Copper industry work
- Aluminum industry work
- Iron and steel industry work
- Foundry work
- Plating industry work
- Carbide industry work
- Acid industry work
- Accumulator (battery) industry work
- Welding work
- Work related to supplying water to mines
- Rubber processing
- Underground work (mines, etc.)
- Work using radioactive and radioionizing materials
- Work with noise levels exceeding 85 dB
- Work performed underwater or under pressurized air
- Work producing or using agricultural pesticides
- Dusty work that produces pneumoconiosis
Provided the daily working time limit is not exceeded, the ministry counts the following situations as part of daily working time:
a) Time required for workers to descend into or enter underground or underwater workplaces (such as mines, quarries), and the time needed to exit those places.
b) Time spent traveling when workers are sent by the employer to perform work at a location other than their workplace.
c) Time during which the worker is at work and ready to perform duties at any moment but remains idle, waiting for tasks with the employer’s permission or at the employer’s request.
d) Time a worker spends away from their main job because the employer sends them to another location and engages them there without performing their primary duties.
e) Time allotted for nursing mothers to breastfeed their children.
f) For tasks such as construction, maintenance, repair, or restoration of railways, roads and bridges—where workers must be transported together to and from worksites located far from their residences—the time spent transporting them collectively and in an organized manner is counted as working time.
Which Periods Are Not Considered Working Time?
Any time spent by a worker when they are not performing their primary job and which does not fall within the situations listed above is not considered working time.
Additionally, under the final paragraph of Article 69 of Labor Law No. 4857, periods spent on uninterrupted rest breaks of 12 hours are not counted as working time. These so-called “rest breaks” are excluded from working time on the grounds that their duration can vary depending on the nature of the work and the climate, season, and customs of the region where the work is performed.
Furthermore, time spent transporting a worker for reasons not arising from the nature of the job—such as tasks specific to the employer or transport provided solely as a social benefit to or from the workplace or another location—is not regarded as working time by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.