Tekel workers protest to secure their future

Kara is among the 12,000 workers from Turkey’s former tobacco and alcohol monopoly, Tekel, who face unemployment as a result of privatization. He is from İzmir, but the workers who are standing in the street in the middle of Ankara have come from different parts of Turkey, including Malatya, Hatay, Manisa, Bitlis and İstanbul, since Tekel has factories all over the country. 

The workers arrived in Ankara on Dec. 14 in 106 buses to participate in a protest demanding that they be transferred to other public institutions.

Since then they have demonstrated in Abdi İpekçi Park in Ankara, visited political parties in Parliament and protested outside the headquarters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) but after the police broke up their protest using pepper spray and water cannons, they changed their tactics and started to demonstrate outside the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Türk-İş).

What leads Kara to say “God is with us” is not only the sanctity he attributes to their struggle, which he describes as a “struggle for bread and the future of our children” but also the nice weather in Ankara. From the early hours until late at night they stand outside; Turk-İş supplies them with free tea, and some civil society organizations send sandwiches. Sometimes at night they are given accommodation by associations and unions.

“If the weather was cold, it would be difficult to maintain the struggle,” Kara points out.

 Kara says he has been in Ankara since the beginning of the protest except for a couple of days after the police dispersed them. He says he became sick after the pepper spray since he suffers from asthma. He went back to İzmir, saw his two children, 5 and 6-years-olds, recovered from his ailment and came back.

During the dispersal of the crowd, several people threw themselves on the ground while others jumped into a pool. It was the third day of the protests, and a few opposition lawmakers were also hit by water cannons.

After that event they moved to the headquarters of Türk-İş in Kızılay in a pedestrian area. Their protest usually starts around 10 a.m., chanting slogans like “If there is no bread, there is no compromise” and “No to discouragement, long live our honorable struggle.”

 There are placards around the perimeter of the building that read “Don’t play with our future,” “We are workers, we are right, we will win” and “This fire will burn you, too.”

Workers asked to accept less

They are concerned about a law called 4/C, which aims to prevent the victimization of workers; however, the law makes it possible to employ workers temporarily and eliminates severance pay if they are laid off. After Tekel’s privatization, the workers were employed under the terms of this law.

What upsets them about 4/C is not only the possible decrease in their salaries from TL 1,200 to an average TL 650. The workers are claiming that under this regulation they will be given jobs for only 10 months of the year and for the other two they will have no income. Social benefits will be removed, and since they will be temporary workers, they will not be part of a union. The workers are claiming that severance payments, overtime wages and employment guarantees for the future will be eliminated as well.

If this is the case, Kara, who makes TL 1,200 a month, will not be entitled to the same amount and will face further difficulties ensuring a future for his two children, who were born after 12 years of infertility treatment.

“I want my children to be useful to the country, I am here for their future,” he says.

Another worker, Müzeyyen Bayar from Diyarbakır, a mother of two and a widow, is very upset, too. “I make TL 1,200, pay TL 400 rent and send my two children to secondary school. It is impossible to find another job in Diyarbakır. If we are forced to work within the framework of 4/C, this means I will not be able to stand on my own two feet,” she says.

They emphasize that they are not against the privatization but the closure of their workplaces and that this is why they want to be transferred to other institutions with the  employee benefits they have built up thus far.

For the workers, staying outside for almost the entire day is not easy, but they are happy about the solidarity of the other civil society organizations.

“We are staying in another union’s guest house,” says Bayar. Another worker comments, “You’re lucky, we are staying in the Tunceliler Derneği association. There are 20 of us sleeping on the floor, but we will not leave Ankara until we get our rights,” he adds.

For New Year’s Eve, they were outside, too. The singers Sabahat Akkiraz and Edib Akbayram visited them and sang for them. It was the 17th day of their protest and the next day, on Friday morning, the minister of employment and social security, Ömer Dinçer, told them in a press conference to go home and take the improved conditions of 4/C.

According to him the 4/C framework will be regulated and instead of 10 months’ employment the workers will be offered 11 months. The salaries of the 4/C workers will be increased, too; a primary school graduate will make TL 772, and a secondary school graduate will earn TL 856.

“The conditions are better now, the Tekel workers should take them,” he said and added that this is not an issue open to bargaining.

But the Tekel workers are extremely upset with the government, especially with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who claimed that the Tekel workers are enjoying themselves instead of working and that they are costing the state TL 40 billion a month.

“We told them to make preparations two years before the privatization. After privatization they are just taking their salaries, and this is the public’s money. I am sorry, but I will not let anyone take away the rights of this country’s orphans,” he had said while criticizing the Tekel workers.

The women workers standing next to Bayar, when asked about it, show their hands full of calluses.

“Look at them,” says Yüksel Türker, a mother of three, “we are all in the manual labor part of the process. We prepare the tobacco right after it is washed at 80 degrees. It smells very bad, but in order to not to harm the tobacco we are not allowed to open any windows. We start work at 7 a.m.,” she says.

“For 12 years, every day I have carried tobacco bales weighing 60 kilos on my back. If they don’t believe me, they can check the factory records,” Kara points out with a sad voice.

“It is insulting to us to say that we are taking away the rights of orphans. We are just workers who are working, ready to work and raise our children as respectable citizens,” he says, adding, “I miss them, but I don’t have any idea how to feed them. I am 41-years-old, and no one will give me a new job at this age.”