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Turkey’s Kartal Municipality Strike Reveals CHP, DISK and Fake Left

Online Niel November 5, 2024

The collective bargaining and strikes in the municipalities led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which came out on top in the local elections in ebdturk on March 31, reveal the destructive role played by the CHP and the so-called “opposition” unions and pseudo-groups the left who support him.

On October 30, 2,000 workers in Kartal, a municipality of about half a million people in Istanbul, went on strike.

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(The caption reads: “Workers in Kartal Township went on strike by hanging a banner that said, ‘There is a strike at this workplace.'” Workers protesting the sales agreement cut the union logo off the banners.)

The action continued after talks between the Genel-İş Trade Union (affiliated to the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey/DİSK) and the Social Democratic Public Patronage Trade Union (SODEM-SEN) – representing the CHP municipalities – failed to reach an agreement. an agreement that could be imposed on the workers.

On the fourth day of the strike, the headquarters of the Genel-İş Union accepted a sell-out agreement without the knowledge of the workers and against their will, which led to a huge backlash and the continuation of the strike. Other CHP municipalities in Istanbul responded by sending garbage trucks to Kartal to break the strike.

In the face of the growing anger of the workers, the management of the Kartal branch was forced to announce that it did not accept the agreement. The anger has spread to other municipalities where collective bargaining is ongoing. In addition to Kartal, the branch administrations of Maltepe, Ataşehir and Kadıköy municipalities in Istanbul were forced to announce that they will stop work indefinitely starting November 4.

However, on Monday morning, faced with the danger of the strike spreading beyond its control, management at the Kartal branch announced an end to the strike in exchange for the promise of a “further protocol” in January or February and no layoffs.

This was an attempt to calm the workers’ anger and prevent the strike from spreading to other municipalities.

Union leaders signed an agreement calling for a gross daily wage of TL 1,430 ($42), while their own proposal was for a gross daily wage of TL 1,900 ($55). With this agreement, the workers’ net monthly salary was only around 30,000 TL ($875). However, the workers wanted their salary to be 41,000 TL ($1,195) per month, as they requested in the project.

Even the required figure meant that workers would continue to live in poverty amid the ongoing cost of living crisis. According to the October report of the Türk-İş trade union confederation, the hunger threshold, which meets the minimum monthly food requirement of a family of four, was 20,000 TL, while the poverty threshold was over 66,000 TL. According to the CHP-led Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality report, the cost of living for a family of four in Istanbul is 71,000 TL.

A worker told the newspaper Eversel, “The CHP, which calls itself the opposition party, wants to implement the current government’s minimum wage policy, we have a problem with this request. The opposition party, which says ‘the minimum wage must not be less than £30,000′, is trying to finish this job with a base of £30,000 in its own municipality.’

Another worker said: “Our request is a very reasonable request. The salary we ask for is far below the poverty line, but the municipality is trying to condemn us to the brink of starvation”.

Criticizing the government, CHP leader Özgür Özel said in July: “The salary increase is based on TURKSTAT (Turkish Statistical Institute) figures. We are facing an open betrayal of the poor and low-income people of Turkey by a state institution.” In reality, the policy of reducing real wages in the face of massive inflation is part of a ruling class offensive supported by the CHP and other bourgeois parties.

The CHP’s reaction to the strike shows it is as much an enemy of the working class as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This exposes not only the CHP, but also the pseudo-left parties and the Kurdish nationalist People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which collaborated with it in the elections.

The Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) had formed an unprincipled electoral alliance with the CHP. CHP leader Özel explained this as follows: “We worked with TİP as follows. They did not appoint candidates in places where the CHP was going neck and neck and where there was a risk of losing.”

In the face of growing opposition from workers, the DİSK, Türk-İș and Hak-İș trade union confederations issued a joint press statement in early July calling for “an increase in the minimum wage” and “equity in taxation”. Following these statements, union bureaucrats organized various regional rallies. More than 100,000 workers participated in the rally organized by Türk-İş in Ankara on October 20.

The sell-out contract signed by SODEM-SEN and Genel-İș against the demands of Kartal Municipality workers and the breaking of the strike is only the latest incident that reveals the hypocrisy of the CHP and the unions. There is no doubt that similar conspiracies are being hatched against workers for possible strikes in other municipalities. This is the result of the long transformation of unions around the world into extensions of corporations and the state.

For decades, unions affiliated with DİSK and other confederations have imposed a policy of impoverishing workers. This onslaught, which has escalated over the past few years, has led to growing worker resistance, as in Kartal.

According to TURKSTAT data, annual inflation increased by 48.58 percent in October. According to calculations by the independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG), the real annual inflation rate is 89.77 percent. Real wages have fallen dramatically as the government, public and private sectors set wage increases for workers and pensioners based on official inflation.

After refusing to raise the minimum wage in July, affecting millions of workers, the government is now preparing to raise it to a figure below the official rate of inflation in January. Meanwhile, the huge profits of banks and big business continue to fuel inflation. Amid the escalating war in the Middle East, Erdogan’s government is increasing military spending from 970 billion pounds to 1.6 trillion pounds (about $45 billion) in the 2025 budget.

Opposition within the working class to these attacks has reached breaking point. In 37 CHP- and AKP-led municipalities, collective bargaining did not end as even the limited demands of nearly 50,000 workers were rejected by the unions.

Recently, thousands, including workers from Bornova, Buca and Bayraklı municipalities in Izmir; Mamak, Etimesgut and Çankaya municipalities in Ankara; Istanbul’s Maltepe, Kartal, Avcılar, Kadıköy and Ataşehir municipalities protested for decent wages and working conditions.

The struggle of the municipal workers in Turkey is part of the international struggle of the working class, which is facing social attacks like wage cuts and layoffs everywhere. In Germany, Volkswagen, backed by unions, is preparing to close at least three factories, putting tens of thousands of workers out of work. In the US, 33,000 Boeing workers have been on strike for nearly two months after twice rejecting a union-backed sales contract. In retaliation, the company announced 17,000 job cuts. In both places, workers are continuing the struggle by forming grassroots committees that are part of the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank and File Committees.

The experience of the Kartal Municipality strike underscores the urgent need for workers to build grassroots committees to take control of their own struggles, independent of unions. These committees will enable workers to coordinate and unite their strike and call other sections of the working class to support them. We urge municipal workers who are preparing for a strike to contact us to set up a grassroots committee.

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