Workers negotiated with the subcontractor firm Çiftay for the last two weeks without any progress. Workers say they were left no other alternative but to strike
Subcontractors are the winners of exploiting the miners in Turkey after the wave of privatizations.
400 underground and 200 surface miners working for Çiftay Mining, a subcontractor for Ermaden Corporation, which itself is a subcontractor for OYAK-ERDEMIR Mining Industries in Sivas, Divrigi area of Turkey, stopped production to demand better work conditions and wages.
Workers negotiated with the subcontractor firm Çiftay for the last two weeks without any progress. Workers say they were left no other alternative but to strike.
Marching to the freeway, the workers shut the road down for a while before agreeing to open it. When the miners started to march towards the offices of Ermaden for negotiations, the police blocked their route. After negotiating with the security officers, only a handful of negotiators and representatives were allowed to go to the administration building.
The mineworkers in this area belonged to the pro-labor and progressive Yeraltı Maden İş Union, a member of DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions, before they were forced to quit and join a more business-friendly TURK-IS confederation. While labor negotiations were underway, the mining business was sold to the OYAK-ERDEMIR, a government-military business conglomerate joint venture, in 1997. This sale was part of a larger privatization plan that the government was implementing following the IMF and the World Bank’s “suggestions.” After the privatization, the new owners forced the workers to abandon the union. After successfully getting rid of the union, the owners run their business by subcontracting the mine extraction.
Sendika.Org News (MB)
