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13 August, 2007
The ICEM is intent that justice will come for workers at several Turkish worksites currently in labour-management disputes. The ICEM is doing this in efforts behind the scenes, and leadership of the global union federation recently visited picket lines at two of those disputes: Sanovel pharmaceutical in Istanbul and Fresenius Medical Care’s Novamed plant in the free trade zone of Antalya.
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda and Chemicals and Rubber Industry Officer Kemal Özkan visited those sites recently, and the visits generated numerous press articles inside Turkey.
Manfred Warda (center) with Sanovel workers
At the Sanovel İlaçları pharmaceutical company, located in Silivri, Istanbul, 190 members of ICEM affiliate Petrol-İş were sacked after joining the union.
Sanovel, a leading pharmaceutical company in Turkey, dismissed five union leaders on 4 April 2007, after all production workers joined the union. And then on 6 June, the company announced that it had terminated the employment of 190 union members. Management was blunt; it said union status disqualified workers from being able to perform their jobs.
Workers have been assembled in protest at the plant now for 69 days. On 31 July, Warda and Özkan visited the fired union members at their plant. Warda told them and their family members: “Your struggle is for decent working conditions. Your struggle is for your rights as guaranteed by the constitution and your national laws. Your struggle is for universal human and trade union rights.
“After we return to Brussels, your struggle will be known to all fellow workers and you will receive even more international solidarity,” said Warda. “This struggle will ring out until companies like Sanovel recognise trade union rights and it will be our duty to expand this struggle at the global level. Your struggle is ours!”
The 31 July action was organised by Petrol-İş, and the union has done much to receive support from the public. Doctors’ and pharmacists’ associations have declared their support for the workers, and many in the medical professions are refraining from recommending Sanovel products to their patients.
The other dispute that ICEM leaders paid a call to also involves Petrol-Iş, and is the first-ever strike called by a Turkish union in a free-trade zone. Since September 2006, 84 workers – 82 of whom are women – have been on strike against German-headquartered Fresenius Medical Care and its Turkish subsidiary Novamed. Strikers have been picketing that plant now for 322 consecutive days.
Petrol-İş President Mustafa Öztaskin speaks to workers
On 3 August, the ICEM’s Warda and Özkan visited the strikers in Antalya. At its meeting in May, the ICEM Executive Committee produced a special resolution on this strike after the ICEM’s Women’s Committee took it up.
Speaking to the strikers, Warda said, “The whole world knows of your struggle and you must know trade unionists in many, many countries are behind you. Your struggle is not only for fair and just wages, but also human dignity.
“Last March 8, on International Women’s Day, your voice was carried by the ICEM throughout the world, and we will continue to do just that,” said Warda, who praised the strikers for their decisiveness and promised to continue to press to change the company’s anti-worker prejudices everywhere in the world.”
Warda and Özkan were accompanied by the President of Petrol-İş, Mustafa Öztaşkın, and the union’s General Secretary Mustafa Çavdar.