INTERVIEW: Berthold Huber

INTERVIEW

Union: IG Metall

Country: Germany

Text: Léonie Guguen

Photos: IG Metall

Why did you get involved in union activities?

The political mood when I joined IG Metall in 1971 was very conducive to trade unions and issues of democracy at the workplace. German chancellor Willy Brandt wanted to extend democracy and it was the time of the biggest approval rates for trade unions in Germany.

What have you learnt in your union career?

I learnt to listen to my colleagues. I learnt to find and define common objectives.

I also learnt not to see myself as so important – it is unity that makes us strong.

In Germany, after the Second World War, we had the advantage of being able to rebuild a union movement based on the principle of one sector, one union – irrespective of racial, religious, or political background. One union that defends your interests in the sector that you work in.

So if you take my union, IG Metall, it is a strong stable union that has, after all the difficulties with reunification, remained strong.

Not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, you moved to the former German Democratic Republic as an officer for IG Metall. What role did unions play in unifying the country?

Two completely different worlds met – an extremely productive industry in the West merged with an economy that was lagging behind. But it’s fair to say that IG Metall managed to get one million new members from the former Eastern states. Unfortunately, we lost many of them again, mainly due to massive job cuts and deindustrialization in former East Germany. Our main task in the beginning was to preserve as many jobs as possible.

Why are global unions like IndustriALL important?

Historically, trade unions in industrialized countries have had an international perspective and you can find this in all the important texts of the labour movement.

It is also why IndustriALL has its headquarters in Geneva, the home of the International Labour Organization, which has the mandate to regulate international standards at the global level.

Globalization has further reinforced the need to regulate labour standards internationally. There has always been an important strategic objective to create a counterbalance to global capital, as globalization plays workers off against each other. We need to work together in unity.

What has IndustriALL achieved in its inaugural four years?

The biggest achievement is that we
have managed to come together across our sectoral borders – from extractive industries such as mining, all the way through the value chain to manufacturing, to form one united global union.

We have managed major successes
in terms of agreements such as the Bangladesh Accord, even though it came out of a cruel tragedy three years ago. No single national union would have been able to achieve it and without IndustriALL and UNI Global Union it never would have been possible.

IndustriALL has also helped to put living wages and minimum working standards
on the global agenda. 7 October, when
our affiliates use the day to protest against precarious work, is a major achievement. In Germany it has become an important day where irrespective of what else is going on, we fight precarious jobs in Germany and across the world.

The five strategic goals that everyone supports and subscribes to are a huge achievement and I’m not aware of any other big organization that has done this.

What challenges are unions facing?

Globalization has contributed to a situation where workers’ rights are violated every day almost everywhere in the world. The right to strike, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining must be valid to all workers everywhere, not just individual countries.

Precarious work is definitely one of the big challenges of the 21st century, whether in an industrialized or new economy. It has pervaded everywhere, although in different forms. The conflict between capital and labour over precarious and safe work is just the beginning. Youth unemployment and informal work are also major challenges.

We see the pressure building on unions, for example, in North America. The zones where there is improvement in union building, such as in South East Asia, are also characterized by many company- based unions. There needs to be one voice on a national basis so unions work together.

After two bloody world wars in the
last century, global peace is the
most important issue. This can only be achieved by continuing to promote human rights, freedom, democracy, justice and growing prosperity for everyone everywhere in the world.

You were interim Chairman of volkswagen and are currently deputy chairman of the supervisory board
at Audi. With your experience in the car industry, how much of a threat is Industry 4.0?

When we talk about Industry 4.0 we talk about digitalization but a major challenge is the change from fossil fuels, which also adds to pressure on production and jobs. Electric engines require fewer parts and this will affect car-producing countries in Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America.

One thing is clear – manufacturing and producing cars will profoundly change but different countries will
be affected differently. Some countries are also heavily involved in research and development and investment goods and producing robots. Germany is exposed in the car industry but also in the investment goods – in the mechanical and equipment industries.

If you want to influence this structural change in a positive way for workers you need strong trade unions. After all it’s jobs that are at stake.

Firstly, it is a task for national labour unions to address. It is a national issue first before IndustriALL, which must fight for the overarching issues of fair wages, secure jobs and a safe place to work.

What are your views on a 40 per cent quota for women at IndustriALL?

I am unconditionally in favour of a quota for women’s representation
and I have fought for that at IG Metall.
The biggest question is how to achieve it and what the sanctions will be if affiliates violate the quota? I’m in favour of changing the statutes, it’s a political statement and commitment, but it is more important that it takes place in reality and not just in our documents. We need to talk about how we actually achieve better participation by women.

What are you hoping IndustriALL can achieve in the next four years?

The mere creation of IndustriaLL is 
a success. The preparation for this took years, if not decades. We have managed to address issues across sectors and I have hardly been to a meeting or discussion where sectoral origins played an important role for participants. But we still need to develop our common culture further.

It is not enough to merely describe the evil of global capital. you have
to be active. You have to challenge the companies and that is where the need for visible and effective campaigns comes into play and the need to further increase IndustriALL’s visibility.

Beyond the five goals, we have to again translate this into concrete action and the activities we have in the regions,
for example, with precarious work. Through a bigger focus on organizational development we have to build strong, united, democratic, independent, representative and self-sustaining trade unions throughout the world.

For this, the role of the regions and the regional work definitely needs to be strengthened. We can’t do this and other tasks from Geneva.

The President is the voice of the affiliates. The President needs to have a strong voice and opinion, but the major task is to listen and create a common position and unity.

Progress made towards an ILO standard on global supply chains

The expansion of global supply chains has been driven by a business model expressly designed to take advantage of low wages and inadequate regulation and enforcement.

Research shows that while more than one fifth of the global workforce has a job in a global supply chain, respect for workers’ rights in supply chains is declining. In the garment industry, there was a 73 per cent drop in the workers’ rights score of the top 20 apparel exporters to the US between 1989 and 2010. 
At the same time there was a 42 per cent reduction in the price paid for the clothes they produced.

IndustriALL Global Union general secretary Jyrki Raina says that voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives have failed.

They have not been able to meaningfully improve wages and shorten working hours, nor to ensure respect for workers’ right to join a union – or their right to a safe workplace.

We need binding rules for supply chains that put a stop to the global race to the bottom on wages and working conditions.

Most notoriously, social auditing and certification bodies SAI and BSCI gave clean bills of health, respectively, to the Ali Enterprises clothing factory in Pakistan before it burnt down killing 254 workers and Rana Plaza before it collapsed, killing 1,134 workers in Bangladesh.

In this context, worker representatives, including IndustriALL, approached the ILC discussion with the aim of achieving a decision to work towards a Convention on global supply chains to address these deficits. A Convention would establish greater accountability for wages and working conditions and clarify the roles and responsibilities of both suppliers and buyers for ensuring labour rights.

After many heated debates and several late night negotiating sessions, a final text was agreed that gives the mandate to make progress in this direction. The final conclusions call on the ILO to review whether current ILO standards are fit for purpose to achieve decent work in supply chains, and to convene a further meeting of the constituents to consider what guidance, programs, measures, initiatives or standards are needed.  Inclusion of the word ‘standards’ is crucial as this allows the possibility of a future Convention to be squarely on the agenda.

Importantly, the conclusions give the green light to the ILO to support and facilitate negotiations towards global framework agreements and to assist in the follow-up, including monitoring, mediation and dispute settlement.

During the debate, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, signed between IndustriALL, UNI Global Union and more than 200 garment multinationals was repeatedly referenced as a ground-breaking initiative in the field of supply chain accountability and it is highlighted in the conclusions as a binding agreement.

In the absence of global rules for supply chains, IndustriALL has taken action to hold the multinational companies in its sectors accountable. IndustriALL has signed 47 global framework agreements with multinational companies, covering over ten million workers as well as the Bangladesh Accord. It also campaigns against rogue employers by naming and shaming companies in their supply chains with retail exposure. Also in the garment sector, the ACT initiative between IndustriALL and global garment MNCs aims to achieve living wages to garment workers by linking industry level bargaining to reform of brand purchasing practices.

OPINION: What is beyond COP21?

Opinion

Text: Brian Kohler

Policy documents, resolutions taken at congresses, and dozens of sectoral conferences and regional meetings dating from the 1980s to the present, have debated and refined union positions on sustainability and climate change. There are no jobs on a dead planet, and sustainability is no longer a preference but a matter of survival,

says IndustriALL’s sustainability director Brian Kohler.

In Paris, on 12 December 2015 at the climate summit called COP21, a historic agreement to control greenhouse gases and limit climate change was reached. The agreement will have significant effects on most of IndustriALL’s sectors.

Labour’s three top demands for the climate talks in Paris were:

The necessary ingredients for a successful climate accord are found in the Paris text. There is an ambition to hold “global average temperature to well below 2C° above pre- industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C° above pre-industrial levels”. There is provision for periodic review. There is acknowledgement that a transformation of the economy is implied. There are references, although weak, to needed finance.

Just Transition is incorporated in the preamble with clear language:

“Taking into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities.”

Signatory parties must now accept that they have made a political commitment to Just Transition, strengthened by the ILO’s recent Guidance document on Just Transition.

Perhaps more important than government commitments will be the signals it sends
to the global economy. It will become increasingly difficult for investors or insurers to justify the risks of putting their money into fossil fuels. This will not change the financial world overnight, but it will change it.

The Paris Agreement must be seen as a starting point, not a finish line, creating an institutional framework that has all the necessary ingredients to succeed.

A Just Transition for workers and the environment

The concept of a Just Transition is that workers, their families, their communities and their unions are respected and protected, while creating new decent
work in sustainable industries. Workers did not choose jobs that damaged the environment; they needed work to support themselves and their families.

It is profoundly unfair that the entire cost of changes towards sustainability should be borne by working people.

Strong social safety nets are a prerequisite for a Just Transition programme, but resorting to such safety nets will never
be labour’s first choice. The first choice, and the most Just Transition possible,

will always be to create, evolve, or maintain sustainable jobs. A sustainable, or greener, job is not always what comes to an environmentalist’s mind. Even manufacturing solar panels and windmills requires fuel, energy, steel and plastics that must come from somewhere, and these must be considered sustainable jobs.

JUST TRANSITION IN REALITY

Just Transition was inspired by the policies that many governments, notably in the USA, put in place to reintegrate thousands of demobilized military into the civilian work force following World War II. A more recent and relevant example is how Germany handled the winding down of most of their coal mining industry in the last few decades. Thanks to good social protection programmes, creative labour adjustment policies, collaboration with trade unions – and adequate funding – workers
and communities were kept whole, showing that the social outcomes of economic transitions depend on the public policies adopted, and that this can be done.

The only way to ensure a Just
Transition is to create structured programmes to facilitate it and to deal with its consequences. If workers
are blackmailed with their jobs, the environment will lose. Therefore workers must not be asked to make this choice. Trade unions must avoid becoming the “last defender of the indefensible”.

A Just Transition programme has to be
all encompassing; a flexible approach to helping workers, their families, and their communities. It must involve workers in its design, and it must be customized to each situation. A Just Transition programme might even assist in the creative restructuring of obsolete industrial sites. And it must keep workers and their unions whole.

Winning a just transition to a sustainable economy

Renewable energies will grow rapidly in
the future to make up a greater proportion of the overall energy mix, and greener, more sustainable industrial processes and products will make up a greater proportion of overall industrial production. In the meantime the labour movement needs to make sure that workers do not pay the price for the environmental footprint of their industries.

Global greenhouse emissions need to peak now – February 2016 was already the warmest ever recorded – otherwise the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 2C° will not be met and the social, economic and environmental consequences experienced by everyone, globally, will be catastrophic.

IndustriALL Global Union, the ITUC and the US trade union congress, AFL-CIO, met in Washington DC, USA, in March to discuss how the global labour movement will tackle policy pressures resulting from the Paris Agreement reached at the COP21 climate summit last December.

The particular focus of the meeting was how a Just Transition for affected workers can be achieved. Workers in the energy sector, particularly in coal, but also in heavily energy-dependent industries, will be strongly affected by efforts to control greenhouse gases and limit climate change in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

In some aspects, the trade union movement has overlapping interests
with environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs); whereas in other aspects we share some concerns with our employers. However, the expertise for industrial transformation and how to make this change socially fair and just, lies within the labour movement.

The importance of environmental justice in this context is clear: especially in the developing world, many communities largely depend on single industries such as mining, but these plants are often also the largest environmental delinquents due to weak or lacking national environmental regulations and older technologies.

A Just Transition is not something that can be won at the bargaining table.
It requires deliberate public policy choices, building on a foundation of strong social protection programmes and sustainable industrial policies that will transform existing jobs to be more sustainable as well as create plenty of new greener jobs.

A Just Transition will not happen by itself and the so-called free market will not deliver it. It requires intense lobbying and discourse with both companies and governments – otherwise workers will fall victim to a last-minute scramble for solutions to meet the Paris Agreement without the necessary socio-economic considerations.

It is our responsibility to show leadership at this crucial moment in history. We cannot negotiate with the laws of physics;
but we can – and will – advocate sustainable industrial policies and demand justice and decent work for all of today’s and tomorrow’s workers. 

industriAll Europe confronts a continent in crisis

The congress took place in the context of economic and political crisis in Europe. The wake of the sovereign debt crisis has seen the collapse of political consensus, increased austerity and the dominance of a financial elite at the expense of society and working people. Millions of industrial jobs have been lost, wage levels are suppressed, there is a tremendous growth in precarious employment, and trade union rights are under attack across the continent.

Congress took stock of the crisis and developed a plan to address it, electing a new leadership team for the period of 2016-2020. The newly elected leaders, Luc Triangle, Syvain Lefebre, Benoît Gerits, Luis Ángel Colunga and re-elected president, Michael Vassiliadis made a strong political intervention on the need for a social Europe with strong unions as a counter to corporate dominance.

The failure of Europe’s political elite to confront the crisis is leading to social breakdown, growing inequality both within and between member states, and a growth of right wing extremism. Trade deals like TTIP and CETA prioritize corporations at the expense of society.

Europe needs a progressive model based on economic and social solidarity, with investment in quality manufacturing jobs. The challenges facing Europe are unequally shared, with working people across the continent bearing the burden of austerity, and countries in the south bearing the brunt of both the debt crisis and the influx of refugees. A humane Europe should share these challenges.

Luc Triangle, the new general secretary of industriAll Europe, stated that “effective trade union coordination will be at the heart of industriAll Europe’s core activities during the next four years, with the aim of strengthening trade union power and the organization’s European identity”.

industriAll Europe’s will put the interests of its members first. The organization’s goals for the next term will focus on four key goals:

“industriAll Europe and IndustriALL Global Union will be working together closely as organizing and building union power is also on the agenda in Europe. However more woman leaders are needed on the top!” said Jyrki Raina, IndustriALL Global Union general secretary.

Mexican union leader calls for immediate government action

Gomez, who is president of IndustriALL affiliate, Los Mineros, has been in Geneva, Switzerland to attend the 105th Session of the International Labour Conference taking place from 30 May to 10 June. The government of Mexico was requested to appear before the conference’s Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS) to answer allegations of serious violations of ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association.

The Mexican government brought a delegation of 70 representatives from government, business and trade unions to the conference to boast about recent constitutional and labour reforms proposed to the Senate. However, only one single trade union representative in the delegation was from a democratic union. 

Napoleon Gomez, who addressed the committee on behalf IndustriALL Global Union, denounced the protection contracts in the country, which are made between undemocratic unions and companies without workers’ consent or, often, knowledge. The protection contracts have been disastrous for Mexican workers who are locked into unfair agreements and poverty wages.  

The government of Mexico told the Committee that the April 2016 proposals for labour law reform will change the system. However, it is unclear when and if the labour reform will be passed by Congress. The proposals will also do little for workers already stuck under protection contracts. Napoleon highlighted that to resolve all the current cases before the CAS and Committee on Freedom of Association at the ILO, no labour reform is needed. The Mexican Government needs to prove that it is committed to implement freedom of association in the real world and not only in public relations statements. 

In a video statement Gomez explains that the government needs to simply enforce existing legislation to stop the violations against trade unions. Watch the statement here:

In English

In Spanish
 

Holding multinational companies accountable

The ILO estimates that the number of jobs in global supply chains in 40 countries increased from 296 million in 1995 to 453 million in 2013. This represents more than one fifth of the global workforce.

Research published by the ITUC shows that the 50 leading multinational corporations employ only six per cent of the workers who manufacture their products directly. Suppliers and subcontractors employ the remaining 94 per cent, or a 116 million-strong hidden workforce.

The expansion of global supply chains has been driven by a business model expressly designed to take advantage of low wages and inadequate regulation and enforcement.

Research further shows that respect for workers’ rights in supply chains is declining. In the garment industry, there was a 73 per cent drop in the workers’ rights score of the top 20 apparel exporters to the US between 1989 and 2010.
At the same time there was a 42 per cent reduction in the price paid for the clothes they produced.

Workers at all stages of global supply chains can justifiably ask why their pay and conditions are so poor. They are making products or contributing services for companies that rake in massive profits and could well afford to guarantee all workers in their supply chains a decent standard of living.

CSR has failed. It has not been able to meaningfully improve wages and working hours, nor to ensure respect for workers’ right to join a union. Most notoriously, social auditing and certification bodies SAI and BSCI gave clean bills of health, respectively, to the Ali Enterprises clothing factory in Pakistan before it burnt down killing 254 workers and Rana Plaza before it collapsed, killing 1,134 workers in Bangladesh.

IndustriALL supports the call of the workers’ group for an ILO Convention on global supply chains. It should establish legal accountability and provide guidance for developing policy and legislation to ensure respect for workers’ rights.

In the absence of global rules for supply chains, IndustriALL has been taking action to hold the multinational companies in its sectors accountable.

IndustriALL has signed 47 global framework agreements with multinational companies, covering over ten million workers. Our recently signed GFA with H&M has already proven instrumental in solving conflicts in the company’s supply chains in Myanmar and Pakistan, leading to union recognition and reinstatement of dismissed workers. This agreement cover 1.6 million workers and our GFA with Inditex 1.4 workers, employed by the garment brands’ suppliers and subcontractors, guaranteeing their fundamental labour rights, and providing for joint dispute resolution mechanisms at local, national and global levels.

This is global supply chain responsibility in action.

But nothing less than a fundamental change to the way that production is organized in garment supply chains will provide relief to workers from poverty wages and crippling working hours.

Such a fundamental change may turn out to be the legacy of the Rana Plaza collapse, a defining moment for the way that companies approach supply chain compliance. It made possible a groundbreaking, legally-binding agreement between global unions and more than 200 companies: the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

The Accord establishes a new model of cooperation between global buyers and trade unions to enforce compliance with standards. The challenge now is to further develop this model to address other systemic supply chain rights violations.

Global garment companies and IndustriALL Global Union have now joined forces to apply such an approach to living wages in the garment industry in a process known as ACT.

IndustriALL has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the global garment brands involved in the ACT process. The MoU is explicit in identifying the development of industry bargaining in garment producing countries as essential to achieving living wages and the need for effective recognition of workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in order for this to be realized.

It requires the resulting industry-wide agreements to be linked to brand purchasing practices, to ensure that factories pay the agreed rate to their workers.

By creating mechanisms that link unions, buyers and suppliers, the ACT process aims to create a framework for genuine supply chain industrial relations for a fair and stable global garment industry.

ACT is the best chance we have to improve garment workers’ wages in a way that is scalable, sustainable and enforceable.

IndustriALL Global Union goes beyond naming and shaming multinational companies by entering into direct relationships with them to regulate their supply chains in the interests of workers. We need the assistance and cooperation of the ILO to support these efforts and to establish binding rules for supply chains that put a stop to the global race to the bottom on wages and working conditions.

PROFILE: Unions in Turkey: holding the line for workers

Profile

Union federations: Türk-Iş, DİSK, HAK-Iş

Country: Turkey

Text: Walton Pantland 

When car manufacturer Renault cancelled union elections and fired workers at its plant in Bursa, Turkey, in February 2016, IndustriALL Global Union affiliate Birleşik Metal-İş sprang into action. The union stopped production and organized a peaceful demonstration to defend its members. The company responded by calling police, who used violence in an attempt to break the union.

Despite Renault signing a global framework agreement with IndustriALL, local management appeared determined to break the unionization of the plant at all costs.

This level of confrontation is not unusual
in Turkey; employers are no strangers to violence, intimidation, illegal sackings and other underhand tactics. Unions do not take this lying down. The recent Renault dispute shows the fractious and sometimes violent industrial relations landscape.

Unions in Turkey face an uphill struggle in an increasingly challenging environment. After a period of strength and growing militancy in the 1970s, a military coup in 1980 lead to the severe repression of trade unions. The military government designed labour laws to discourage unionization, and DİSK, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions, and its affiliates were banned, and their executive committees arrested. They remained banned until 1992.

Erdoğan’s AK Party came to power in 2002, replacing military rule. A new Law on Trade Unions and Collective Labour Agreements was introduced in 2012 to supersede the old laws of the dictatorship, but it is still far from ILO standards.

As a result of this pressure, union density in the private sector has been reduced to three per cent. Turkish workers are at severe risk of exploitation and abuse.

Turkey needs strong unions

The industrial homicide of 301 coal miners in 2014 at Soma is the most compelling argument for why Turkey needs strong unions. The Soma mine was a death trap and the accident was preventable: it only happened through a tragic confluence of greed, incompetence and corruption. The mine was owned by the government but run by a private company, an arrangement of semi-privatization that lead to a focus on profit before safety, while the government turned a blind eye to abuses.

To add insult to death and destruction, a further 2,800 Soma miners were fired by text message in the wake of the accident, and affiliate Maden-İş had to fight a serious battle for justice.

But the tragedy of Soma is just the tip of the iceberg: there have been 1,500 deaths in Turkish mines since 2000, and it took strong union pressure to get the government to ratify ILO Convention 176 on mine safety. For C176 to function, unions need to be able to operate freely, and workers need to be able to report safety concerns and refuse dangerous work.

Turkey is one of the world’s largest textile producers. The industry is dominated by small suppliers and is poorly regulated. Most textile workers earn the minimum wage of 1,647 lira (US$ 570) per month, which is far below a living wage in Turkey. Many workers are unregistered, vulnerable to exploitation and not paid even the legal minimum. It is not unusual to find child labour.

Many premium brands – including Hugo Boss, Mulberry, Benetton, Ermenegildo Zegna and Prada – use Turkish suppliers. But premium brands are not above turning a blind eye to labour exploitation if it lowers production costs: workers making clothes for Hugo Boss in Izmir were paid far below a living wage and were sacked for joining the union Teksif.

Workers making luxury Mulberry handbags – which retail for up to a thousand dollars – were sacked for joining the union Deriteks. IndustriALL launched an international campaign against the brand to support them, forcing the Turkish supplier to recognize the union.

Regional conflict and the exploitation of refugees

Turkey is on the front line of a humanitarian crisis. The civil war in Syria has lead to the influx of more than two million refugees, of which about 400,000 work in Turkey, mostly in agriculture, construction and the textile industry.

Refugees are vulnerable to exploitation. Pressure by unions and civil society has led to a change in Turkish labour law, allowing some refugees to work legally. Also, the global framework agreements between IndustriALL and clothing giants Inditex and H&M mean that pressure can be placed on suppliers to treat refugees fairly.

The civil war in Syria is having an effect on Turkey, which has intervened heavily on
the rebel side. Daesh, the Islamic State movement, has exploited divisions in Turkey by launching a number of bombing attacks within the country, particularly against secular, democratic and progressive forces.

INDUSTRIALL GLOBAL UNION IN TURKEY

INDUSTRIALL HAS 19 AFFILIATES IN TURKEY, THREE PRIVATE SECTOR FEDERATIONS, TÜRK-IŞ, DİSK AND HAK-IŞ.

Unreachable collective bargaining thresholds

The Law on Trade Unions and Collective Labour Agreements sets thresholds for collective bargaining certification. A union that wants to sign a workplace level collective bargaining agreement must organize at least 1 per cent of the entire workforce in that industrial sector.

In the meantime, there are also workplace level thresholds of 50 per cent, and for companies with more than one workplace it is 40 per cent.

According to the legislation, employers
can easily file a complaint at the local court claiming that the union concerned does not have sufficient majority to be a bargaining partner. It is common practice amongst Turkish employers to get rid of union presence at the workplace, or at least to stall the collective bargaining process.

Court cases take years to resolve, preventing unions from functioning freely and efficiently, and also undermining the very nature of fundamental trade union rights, including collective bargaining rights.

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION UNDER THREAT

Even though Turkey has ratified ILO conventions on the freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, fundamental trade union rights remain under pressure.

Turkey’s constitution is clear that “employees have the right to form labour unions without obtaining permission, and they also possess the right to become a member of a union and to freely withdraw from membership, in order to safeguard and develop their economic and social rights and the interests of their members in their labour relations.

No one shall be forced to become a member of a union or to withdraw from membership.”

According to the criminal code, violating the freedom of work and labour and preventing trade union rights can be punished. The reality however, is different.

According to a study made by Labour Studies Community in 2015, 4,362 workers were dismissed because of the actions taken for defending their rights, and 1,116 trade union actions were conducted. The report says 2,258 workers were dismissed just for joining a union, with 2,104 dismissed for action taken.

Right to strike – only on paper

Turkey’s labour law allows for lawful strikes and lockouts to be postponed by 60 days if it is “prejudicial to public health or national security”.

The law also says that “if an agreement
is not reached before the expiry date of
the suspension period, the High Board of Arbitration settles the dispute upon the application of either party within six working days. Otherwise, the competence of the workers’ trade union shall be void.”

In reality, the postponement is actually a ban, as it is impossible to continue to strike after the 60-day period.

New attacks: the introduction of labour brokers

The Turkish parliament is currently debating a draft bill proposed by the government giving private employment agencies the right to
hire workers in a range of sectors. If passed, the new law would entail a huge shift in the labour market from permanent to short-term contracts, allowing the widespread use of precarious employment contracts.

The draft bill would allow companies to use agency workers as a percentage of the total workforce in particular circumstances. Turkish unions argue that this could lead to an excessive use of agency work due to “unforeseen increase in the business volume of the enterprise” or “periodical business increases”, which employers could argue exist at any time in a production system.

A parliamentary commission has endorsed the draft bill, and the bill is expected to come up for consideration at the Grand National Assembly (TBMM). If enacted, millions of workers will end up with agency work contracts rather than permanent ones.

Fighting back against precarious work

After a long struggle, IndustriALL affiliate Lastik-Iş, representing tyre workers, persuaded multinational manufacturers Bridgestone, Pirelli and Goodyear to make thousands of contract workers permanent.

Outsourcing, with lower wages and poorer working conditions in comparison with permanent workers, has become a big threat to union density, collective bargaining and solidarity among permanent and contract workers.

Another affiliate, DİSK-Tekstil achieved
an unprecedented step forward at Greif Enterprises, an American packaging company, by making more than 1,200 contract workers permanent through an agreement between the union and the company.

Hugo Boss – luxury brand, garbage employer

Hugo Boss has put up every possible barrier to union organizing at its most important production factory in Izmir. Management ruthlessly sacks key union members, which they have been found guilty of in Turkey’s High Court of Appeals.

The Turkish Union of Textile, Knitting and Clothing Industry Workers, TEKSIF, an IndustriALL affiliate, has been supporting Hugo Boss workers to organize for over three years. The workers, the vast majority of whom earn less than the poverty threshold with long working hours, discretionary overtime and no social benefits, are seeking a living wage and a voice at work.

Whilst Hugo Boss publicly claims to uphold internationally recognized labour standards throughout its global operations, the 3,000 workers in Izmir have had their fundamental rights at work attacked by management.

Violations include targeting of union supporters and their family and close
friends through threats, punishments and sackings. It took long drawn-out court processes to prove 20 illegal sackings of trade union supporters between 2011 and 2014, while a further eight are still pending
in court. Although the High Court of Appeals confirmed that those workers were dismissed because of their union membership and ordered their reinstatement, management took an option open under the law to pay them an extra compensation instead.

The practice continues and the local management keeps dismissing key union supporters.

International solidarity for auto component workers

IndustriALL’s affiliate Petrol-İş gained legal recognition as the union representing workers at Standard Profil in Turkey and commenced collective negotiations after a four-year organizing campaign.

Standard Profil is a Turkish-based multinational supplier of automotive sealing systems producing for major automakers such as Audi, BMW, Citroën, Daimler, Fiat, Ford, GM, Mercedes, Nissan and Opel.

The union organized more than 50 per cent of Standard Profil’s 2,300 Turkish workers from the plant in Düzce and a sister factory in Bursa, and gained formal certification of recognition.

Nevertheless the company then engaged
in legal challenges to the certification in an effort to block workers from their legitimate workplace rights and sacked union activists inside the larger Düzce factory during the organizing period. 

Four workers die in a series of accidents in Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards

Workers continue to die and be maimed for life in shipbreaking yards, as the Bangladeshi government fails to take action against the gross negligence of employers in ensuring safe working conditions.

An accident at Seiko Steel on 23 May 2016 led to the death of shipbreaking worker Rubel Meah. At the same yard on 29 May 2016, Mohammad Rana (30) died on the spot as a huge steel plate fell on him. Four other workers were injured. On 31 May, one of the injured workers, Abdul Karim (29), succumbed to his injuries in hospital. 

The condition of the other three hospitalized workers, Zahidul (25), Belal (45) and Ripon (25), is reported to be stable at the time of writing.

Subsequently, IndustriALL Bangladesh affiliates report that another worker, Mohammad Babul (35), died in an accident at Laskar shipbreaking yard on 5 June 2016. With these recent accidents, in the first five months of 2016, a total of 10 workers died in Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards. According to government’s own estimate, 16 shipbreaking workers lost their lives in 2014, and at least 13 workers were killed in 2015.

Condemning the incessant accidents and loss of life, Jyrki Raina, general secretary of IndustriALL, in a letter to the prime minister of Bangladesh on 6 June 2016, said:

“Lack of action by the government of Bangladesh, as workers continue to die in the process of earning a livelihood, indeed validates employers’ dereliction towards safety of workers at the shipbreaking yards. These accidents, which are preventable, must end immediately.”

To uphold workers’ right to safe working conditions at shipbreaking yards, IndustriALL calls upon the government of Bangladesh to send a strong signal by acting tough against employers who failed to provide safe working conditions, in this case, proprietors of Seiko Steel and Laskar shipbreaking yard. The government should ensure that accident victims are provided appropriate compensation.

The letter reiterated IndustriALL’s demand for strengthening supervisory mechanisms and urged the government to be decisive and immediately implement the newly revised Bangladesh Ship Recycling Act 2015, and to accelerate steps to ratify the Hong Kong Convention.

IndustriALL’s recent reports on accidents at shipbreaking yards can be found here: 18 April 2016 and 1 April 2016.

Pakistan: Factory fire victims welcome renewed talks on compensation

Two-hundred and fifty-four workers burnt to death trapped behind locked exits at the Ali Enterprises textile factory in Karachi in September 2012. A further 54 people were seriously injured.  During the meeting, representatives of workers and families affected by the tragedy thanked the International Labor Organization (ILO) for agreeing to take on the role of facilitation and coordination of the compensation for the victims.

The meeting also thanked the governments of Germany, as well as trade unions and civil society organizations for their efforts to persuade the German discount retailer KiK to resume talks. KiK, was the only publicly known customer at the factory. 

The meeting underlined the importance of the involvement of the Association of Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Affectees in any talks or agreement. It also passed a resolution to make living wages the basis for calculating compensation.

Lawyers from Germany briefed the gathering on the development of the lawsuit filed in Germany. The three affectees who have filed the case against the KiK will visit Germany to meet trade unions, MPs, government officials and human rights organizations to seek their support. 

Nasir Mansoor, general secretary of IndustriALL affiliate National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), called on the government of Pakistan to take immediate steps to stop reoccurrence of similar accidents; to implement international labour standards; and to obtain legally-binding commitments from employers and international brands to ensure the health and safety of workers.

IndustriALL’s textile director, Christina Hajagos-Clausen, said: “IndustriALL hopes to close this chapter as quickly as possible and achieve full compensation for the victims of the Ali Enterprises fire, as we have done for the victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse and Tazreen fire in Bangladesh.”

The meeting was attended by a large number of the families of martyred workers and affectees, legal experts and representatives from IndustriALL affiliate NTUF, ECCHR and the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC).

Workers denounce anti-trade union practices at Gerdau steel plants

The Council assessed the situation of the Brazilian company’s employees at its plants throughout the world; approved an action plan; and held a demonstration at one of the company’s factories.

Trade union representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Spain, the United States, Peru and Uruguay attended the meeting. Assistant general secretary, Fernando Lopes; regional secretary, Jorge Almeida, IndustriALL regional secretary; and assistant regional secretary, Marino Vani, represented IndustriALL Global Union at the meeting.

Each representative gave an update on the situation at the company in their country. There were a lot of points in common and participants agreed that the network should formulate joint strategies. At all plants, the company uses the law, tax regulations and its own internal rules for its own benefit. Investments focus on reducing labour (size of workforce) and energy costs and promoting the company’s anti-trade union strategy.

Gerdau, which employs more than 45,000 people in 14 countries, has a policy of discouraging trade union organization. When it is obliged to deal with unions, it tries to reduce wages and benefits or amend agreements. It also encourages so-called yellow unions to replace representative unions or stop workers from forming genuine unions.

"Gerdau does not respect workers' rights in many countries, especially in Latin America. It is therefore essential to create a constant flow of information between us to organize joint action," said Anderson Gauer, coordinator of the trade union network of Gerdau employees in Brazil.

The meeting approved the text of a document detailing Gerdau’s anti-trade union practices, proposals for the steel sector and information on the situation of workers at all the company’s factories. The document in question will be submitted to the governments of all Mercosur countries.

Participants met the Uruguayan labour minister, Ernesto Murro, and asked him to introduce measures to protect national industry and allow Gerdau workers to be represented by independent trade unions. The Council asked the minister to approach the company about organizing a visit to a Gerdau plant in the country but the company rejected this request.

The Council therefore organized a demonstration at the factory gates to communicate its support for Gerdau workers in Uruguay, who are currently fighting to be represented by an independent trade union. The demonstration showed the growing unity and solidarity between workers at the international level.

IndustriALL Global Union Assistant General Secretary, Fernando Lopes said:

“The meeting and associated activities in Montevideo strengthened the Gerdau World Workers’ Council in our fight for better working conditions and freedom of association. We came away full of enthusiasm for implementing the action plan approved by the meeting and we thank our Uruguayan colleagues for the excellent organization of the meeting.”