ATIK | Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe | AHM-ATIK News Center
TURKEY | 23 – 01 – 2011 | Introduction
According to the Constitution of Turkish Republic, it’s a legitimate and constitutional right of workers to organize in trade unions. Additionally, forcing workers to resign from membership of any Union is a crime that has a penalty of 3 years imprisonment. However there has not been any boss that has found guilty for not obeying to the rules. This does not mean the positive attitude of bosses in Turkey to the freedom of organization of the workers. This is a consequence of the existing system in our country that is pro-boss and anti-working class orientation.
Despite the constitutional rights, in fact, workers have to face with the challenges coming from all existing institutions of the system. Workers, who would like to organize in a Union to unite and use the right of collective bargaining, are threatened by wide range of institutions from bosses and economic institutions to the military, from administrative bureaucracy to the religious and patriarchal institutions. Additionally despite the existing rule that bans forcing workers to resign could be violated openly however being a union member has to be hidden for a while in order to reach the half of the members of the company because of the another existing but highly effective law that necessitates Unions to organize % 50 plus 1 of the workers to have collective bargaining.
Deri-İş, Turkish Leather and Shoe Workers Union, is a small but highly determinant union that believes in the struggle to defend and advance the rights of workers. Deri-İş is organizing in private companies that are much more difficult than organizing in public companies. First of all most of the private companies are small scale companies and workers generally have kinship ties with the boss. Secondly, there is a high rate of unemployment (about % 20) in our country that workers fear to lose their jobs. Thirdly, as a result of the propaganda and threats of the system and weakness and failures of the existing Unions, workers do not know their rights and do not trust to Unions. Fourthly, bosses collaborating with the state in order to stop Union activities and fire the vanguard workers. The cases brought to the courts take long time to finalize and generally depends on the public opinion. Fifthly when vanguard workers are fired, there is a need to organize resistance in front of the factory and these resistances generally take so long time and need financial resources. These obstacles create difficulties for workers to enjoy their fundamental rights.
- Our activities in Düzce-DESA company
Düzce is a small town located 3 hours away from Istanbul. It is a newly industrializing town and workers generally have links with agricultural production. There is a transition period from agricultural society to an industrializing society. People living in Düzce are generally conservative minded people, religious organizations are very strong and there is no a tradition of worker or peasant movement. Even there is no a strong trade union operating in Düzce.
The Industrial Zone in Düzce is formed as a heaven of cheap labor where government sponsored to the companies by giving free land and cheap infrastructure services. Workers are forced to work over 12 hours even in weekends for a very little salary that is less than 600 TL per month (300 Euro). DESA has its largest factory here in Düzce with about 600 workers. DESA is a well known brand in our country that also makes exportation and work for international companies such as Prada, Marks and Spencer and El Cortes.
When our Union decided to organize in Düzce, we were warned by other Unions that there are mafia groups operating in Düzce, false encounters and murders are very common. However our union, with trust to the working class, initiated its activities and opened a new chapter in the history of Düzce by organizing a resistance first time for a very long time, making manifestations and show variant ways of struggle. As a consequence of our activities, now in Düzce, many other Unions began to operate and there is a growing working class movement that has different resistances and solidarity actions.
The international campaign in support of our Union had a crucial impact in our struggle that many international brands gave an end to work with DESA because of its anti-union stance. Only Prada continues to work with DESA. The international campaign forced the DESA administration to accept our Union’s legitimacy and began to negotiate with us. Together with the DESA, we signed a protocol that the boss declared that DESA would be kind to the organizational freedom of the workers.
However, despite the protocol, problems continue in DESA. These could be summarized as follows:
- The main reason for the continuation of the problem (which is the resistance of the DESA not to respect to the Union) is the support of Prada that continues working together with DESA.
Prada knows the situation and anti-Union anti-worker attitude of DESA very well. There are Italian representatives of Prada that visits DESA and controls the production process. They are well aware of the struggle there; therefore they do not have any dialogue with the Union members and only communicate by the non members, pro-boss workers.
There are two Italian representatives that are in factory between Tuesday and Friday. They have control over all phases of the production process; even they can stop the production.
Their names are:
Before them, there was another Italian representative that is called Rosario and he was inside the factory all weekdays. However he was intervening to the production process so much, so that he was changed by these two other representatives.
Prada knows that only Prada is working with DESA, in other word, DESA is dependent to Prada, so that Prada uses this as an opportunity to decrease the price of the products. For instance, if a price of a product was 10 euros, now Prada forces DESA to produce it for 8 euros.
- Another and a new emerging problem in DESA is the widespread use of the home based labor. Instead of producing in the factory, DESA prefers to make orders to houses where a few workers are working and earning per piece. These workers earn very little money and these are non-registered workers without having social security net.
During the home based working, workers sew, stick and dye the handles of the bags.
As far as we know, there are 11-12 houses in the district called Develi Besni in Düzce, there are 11-15 workers work in these houses. There are also houses in district called Meteköy and in some other districts, but we do not know the number of houses. Yet, we don’t know how many women and children are working in these houses.
These raw materials are carried by two drivers and chief of security of DESA. Drivers’ names are İsmail and Erdoğan and the chief of security’s name is Serdar. They carry raw materials to one house in each district that is called “The House of Distribution”. Other houses could get raw materials from this house.
The price for each piece is 50 kr. (cent) for the house of distribution and 45 kr for other houses. 1 euro is 2 TL (200 Kr/cent), so one piece is about 25 cent.
Apart from the home based labor, DESA also gives order to a workshop that is located in Şehir Mezarlığı Mevki district. This is owned by an ex-supervisor of DESA whose name is Nilüfer. She visits DESA a few times in a week to take raw materials. The machines used in workshop and houses and also the education of the workers are also provided by DESA.
The Chief of Administrative Affairs, Caner Aypar, gave a statement on Öncü RTV (a TV broadcast) that they formed 7 groups and by them DESA is helping to create employment. Additionally, the factory manager, Gürsü Altıoklar, mentioned to a magazine that they give work even to Istanbul.
One of the problems here is that these are unregistered workers. Second and more important for European customers is that, as far as we know, Prada does not know about these home based production. They usually provide raw materials on Mondays and Saturdays when the representatives of Prada are not in factories.
- The discriminative policies inside the DESA factory continue systematically despite the protocol. Our members’ workplaces are changed systematically in order to make pressure over the member workers.
On 14th of October, 2010 our member Tayyar Temizel, whose workplace had changed from sweeping machine to the press, was forced to sign a document to register the change of the workplace. When our member refused this demand and protested the unfair treatment of the administration towards Union members, The Chief of Administration Affairs, Caner Aypar ordered the Security to send him out of factory and fired him. Our Union protested this attack and as a result of the Union activities, DESA accepted to reinstate our member Tayyar Temizel.
Our members are also tried to be provocated to create problems in work place and find a reason to be fired. On 21st of October, 2010 our members Hakan Lermi was insulted by a pro-boss worker however our members continued working and our Union protested this kind of maltreatment.
- There are measurements in performance in the factory and could be used as a reason to fire the workers. These measurements generally are used over member workers. After these measurement workers have to sign the document, however our members only sign one column of the measurement and other column is written by the administration.
The Union members have to work very seriously with a high performance and mostly under supervision; however non-member workers are left freer and they do not get warning for less performed workers.
- On 18th of June, 2010 our Union made a demonstration and press statement in front of Prada Storeroom in Nişantaşı, İstanbul and declared that our Union initiated second international campaign against DESA together with our international partners. Our demand is to strengthen this campaign to force DESA and Prada to be kind to the freedom of organization of the workers.
We demand for street actions and protests against Prada and DESA in Europe in coordination with the actions that our Union is organizing.
Musa Servi
President
Deri-İş
Turkish Leather and Workers Union
