By Esat Erdoğan
In recent months, two important issues have quietly passed off the agenda. One of them was the Medium Term Program presented by the Minister of Treasury and Finance Mehmet Simsek to the World Bank. Following the program, the WB decided to increase the $17 billion it would give to Turkey to $35 billion. We do not yet know what will be done in return for this money. But we want to draw attention to the Medium Term Program. This new, government program will determine our lives in the coming months.
The second item on the agenda was the Central Bank’s letter to the government. The letter demanded that the minimum wage be increased only once a year. In other words, it said not to raise salaries in July. Thus, the Central Bank was tying the fight against inflation to the fight against the minimum wage. The same old liberal nonsense that if they don’t raise wages, product prices and inflation will fall… The Medium Term Program and the denial of our July salary increases are two pillars of the new attack program of the Palace and the bosses against working people.
1. Bosses Win, Cronies Loot, We the Poor Pay the Bill
The Palace thinks that it will get out of the economic crisis by leaving workers, pensioners and the poor hungry and in need of hand-outs. There are two main reasons why he thinks he can achieve this so easily: First, the weakness of our degree of unity (and that the control over when we unite is in the hands of the union bureaucracies). Secondly, the Palace regime has increased its control and pressure on workers’ organizations.
We observe that the forces of state repression are intervening more harshly in workers’ struggles. This repression is a clear indication that the Palace fears united workers. The attacks on Lezita workers are the most recent example of this. Again, the struggles against the environmental massacres happening in the workplaces of the energy and construction bosses clustered around the ruling party, AKP, have also faced harsh intervention by the regime because they disrupt the wheels of the profit machine. Likewise, the state’s violence never lets up against all of the oppressed groups seeking their democratic rights. Dawn raids are becoming commonplace. The possibility of uniting of all these struggles is the regime’s nightmare…
The Palace promises us poor wages, worse working and living conditions, non-unionized and irregular work. The bosses get tax amnesties and incentives… The Palace regime, which is a new type of “Bonapartism,” was established within the presidential system after the July 15 coup attempt. This regime exists for the benefit of the bosses’ class. For this reason, they have been very happy with their increasing profits since the system was established. While securing the profits of the bosses, this oppressive system interferes with the organization of the working class, often from within and sometimes with direct pressure from outside.
Why are they so afraid of us uniting? The main reason is that the economy is slowing down. The current account deficit is decreasing because imports are also slowing down. Industry is slowing down because credit is getting more expensive and it is harder to get credit. For these reasons, unemployment has also started to rise. They know better than us that if we laborers do not want to pay the bill for this deep crisis and if we unite and stop carrying out daily life, they will not be able to stop us.
2. We are dying while working
Under Erdoğan’s rule, workplaces have turned into “Murder Companies.” In the last 20 years, 32,984 of our brothers and sisters have died in work accidents. In 2023, 1,981 of our brothers and sisters lost their lives in work accidents, while in the first quarter of 2024, 425 brothers and sisters were sacrificed to the bosses’ greed. The protector of the “murder companies” is the Palace.
As misery continues, work accidents and precarious working conditions will increase. Migrant workers, the poorest, most oppressed sectors of society will work to death in murder companies, facing all risks uninsured. If unions and working class organizations do not put a stop to the massacres and murder companies today, when will they?
3. Barriers to Unionization Increase
Despite these harsh conditions, there are millions of workers who want to engage in struggle. But first the terror of bosses and law enforcement awaits them, and then come the union bans. Although it has become easier to join a union through the internet, employers do not recognize the authority of unions, and the authority is reduced through attacks such as dismissals. The courts watch these unconstitutional acts happen.
When collective bargaining authorization is obtained and the right to strike is exercised, the Palace bans strikes. Sisecam, United Metal Strikes, Collar Coal, Asil Celik, Akbank, Soda Kromsan, Izban, Bekaert strikes were all banned due to national security reasons. Strike bans make it difficult to win rights.
If a strike decision is put up, it is forbidden to set up tents, forbidden to threaten the employer, forbidden to block the entrance and exit of cars. The bosses want a silent strike without action. It is not possible to get results with such a method. To get the bosses to back down, we need actions that go beyond the legal restrictions. The grounds for the existence of the unions are disappearing.
4. Union Bureaucracy Sinks the Ship of Struggle
There are approximately 18 million workers in Turkey. While there are 227 trade unions in the country, only 59 of these unions have collective bargaining authority. In other words, while the number of unionized workers is around 2 million, the rate of unions that can make collective agreements is only 8 percent.
Even though the number of unionized workers is low, these workplaces continue to lead the struggles because our class unity is generally weaker in non-unionized workplaces. The boss-state-mafia triangle threatens workers in unison. In unionized workplaces, the union bureaucracies often join this triangle. They get struggling workers fired. They denounce revolutionaries. They play boss more than the boss does and sign off on miserable contracts. They even cooperate with the mafia and attack struggling workers and revolutionaries. Stealing from workers is already normalized for them.
What good are the unions, which still do not take seriously the issue of the missing wage hike due to the Medium Term Program, the attack program of the Palace? In Turkey, where inflation is unreal, all wages have fallen to the level of the minimum wage. In unionized workplaces, contracts have eroded in the face of inflation. Now our unionized workers are asking, “Why am I unionized?”.
5. The Labor Movement Continues to Struggle
There has been an increase in labour protests in recent years, although they have not taken a mass form. However, in proportion to increasing poverty, we can say that there has not yet been a major change. The struggles are mostly taking place in unionized workplaces due to collective bargaining disputes. Wages in unionized workplaces have come very close to minimum wage workers. In non-unionized workplaces, there are more struggles for unionization or wage increases. These protests and unionization attempts often result in dismissals. The actions are limited to their own workplaces. Since they do not spread, they do not create a qualitative accumulation. And as we said at the beginning, a significant part of the protests involve an effort to protect eroding wages.
The Lezita strike has been going on in Izmir since March 8, with frequent interventions by the police. Novares, Yolbulan Metal, Purmo Metal, Mersen Metal, Sumitomo, Kristal Yağ went on strike over wage disputes. The Gates Metal, Corning Kablo, Bekaert, Trelleborg, and Colgate-Palmolive strikes were the most prominent strikes last year. Municipal workers, whose wages have been eroded in the face of inflation, are showing an important determination to struggle. Most recently, the workers of Cigli municipality started a resistance against dismissals. Likewise, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality workers are on strike for a wage increase. Kadıköy Municipality workers are preparing for a strike. In Antep and Urfa, weaving workers have come to the fore with their struggles in the last two years. Spontaneous explosions in the textile industry have had a more widespread impact than labor actions in other cities. The actions of non-unionized motor couriers continue to shake the plaza districts and go to the heart of the city. Private sector teachers continue their sit-ins for the right to a basic salary. We will see more and more of these actions. But the point is for them to unite, to become a river and flow into the streets.
6. May 1, 2024 Istanbul Rally
In all this difficult and combative atmosphere, May Day could have been organized with enthusiasm. The working class could have shown the power of its unity to the bosses. The May Day rally organized by DISK, KESK, TTB and TMMOB confederations without preparation and without preparing its masses ended in a demoralizing manner. In such a crisis environment, there was a rally that did not become a mass showing and was far from breaching the Taksim area and disrupting life as usual.
The workers who did not gather in the field were mostly replaced by revolutionary organizations. Their efforts and numbers could not and were not enough to overcome those barricades. As a result, many of our friends in the struggle were arrested in dawn operations. This call and the failure to gather turned into a demonstration of the regime forces.
Struggling unions and revolutionary organizations bear responsibility towards the working class and poor people. For this reason, the necessary lessons should be learned and alternatives for a united, mass struggle should rapidly be created.
7. If struggles accumulate, this order will change
On January 28, 1963, the fire lit by the Kavel workers spread to factory occupations. That wave from below paved the way for workplace occupations and the subsequent June 15-16 Resistance and a series of actual actions that exceeded legal limits.
After army intervention at 1980, the Desan shipyard workers (1984) who overcame the strike bans, and the Netas strike in 1986 illuminated the darkness of those years. In 1989, the class struggle that flared up in the Spring protests culminated in the Great Miners’ March that toppled the Ozal government.
The storm that emerged in 2015 also grew out of the accumulation of anger against the union bureaucracies. The accumulated anger surpassed both the union mafias and the state forces.
If struggles multiply, if there are gains in struggles, there will be more hope and more worker cadre engaging in struggle. The class consciousness and organization of the working class will increase. Consciousness and organization sharpened by anger overcome all prohibitions. Today, we need such struggles, rights won through actual activity and a qualitative accumulation of victories as a result. Once this accumulation is unleashed, new struggles in unionized and non-unionized workplaces will spread like wildfire across the country.
Today there is a dynamic of anger and rupture in the labor movement. Factories, workshops, offices are boiling. It is necessary to organize this accumulation and mobilize cadres within the workers’ movement. It is necessary to raise workers’ democracy from the grassroots against union bureaucracies. In order to give strength, hope and leadership to struggling workers, the unity of revolutionary forces, struggling unions, non-union workers’ committees and all kinds of grassroots organizations is necessary.
8. In conclusion
As we said at the beginning, the two main issues today are the Medium Term offensive program and salaries that have lost their value against inflation. We need raises in July. In addition, minimum wage increases should be based on real inflation data. But this is not enough, we want quarterly increases in monthly wages.
We demand an end to irregular, precarious work. We demand food prices to be affordable and for free basic food to be distributed to the public. We say that pensions should increase in line with the minimum wage. We demand an end to rent increases.
Against this wave of attacks, we must unite our demands, our organizations and put forward the alliance of the working class. We must use our weapons of the strike and actual struggle against the Middle Term Program, the Twelfth Development Plan, the public austerity package and other austerity policies. This is the only way out of the twilight.
