They’ve Fought for Over 1,000 Days To Get Their Jobs Back. They’re Not Backing Down
The incredible story of 14 blue-collar workers taking on one of America's biggest companies.
GG By Gabriel Geiger
Never in his wildest dreams – or nightmares – did Faik Kutlu see himself taking on one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations in an epic three-year battle. Yet today is the 1,172nd day of a seemingly never-ending struggle that has pitted him and a dozen other blue-collar Turkish workers against Cargill, the biggest privately-held corporation in the US by revenue.
Kutlu and his fellow workers were fired for attempting to form a union, and their protest has taken them from the streets of Istanbul to the courts, and back again, in a relentless David vs Goliath struggle to get their old jobs back.
It’s one of the longest-running labour struggles in Turkey’s recent history, but for the workers involved this battle is far larger than themselves. It’s about holding to account a company quick to highlight its respect for international labour rights agreements and yet which, they say, continues to exploit loopholes in violation of those very agreements. And, it’s about uniting the Turkish working class in opposition against ever-deteriorating conditions in a country with the highest income inequality in Europe.
“This is not only a fight to get our jobs back, but a fight for union rights, a fight for the rights of the working class in Turkey,” Kutlu said. “The working conditions are getting worse day by day. We have to show other workers that if we fight we can win.”
It all began in March 2018 when workers at the Bursa-Orhangazi starch factory and a series of other plants in Turkey and their union filed for collective bargaining status. A month later, 14 of those workers, all union members, were fired from the plant.
The plants are owned by Cargill, an American multinational corporation producing the basic ingredients used by much of the commercial food sector, such as corn starch, sugar, and palm oil. Cargill is the second largest private company in the United States by revenue and its clients include Coca Cola, Nestlé, and McDonald’s. In Turkey, Cargill plants produce starch, sweeteners, and oleochemicals, among other things, for the Turkish and international market.
In the three years since their dismissals, the workers have marched hundreds and hundreds of miles across the country, demonstrating from Ankara to Bursa, picketing in front of the local headquarters of Cargill, as well as some of its biggest customers, including Coca Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo. In Istanbul, they slept on the street in front of Cargill’s headquarters for over two months and ate their meals on the cold pavement. On the 11th of January – their thousandth day of protest – the workers gathered in Istanbul to make a speech at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, but were detained by police.
For Kutlu, the struggle has completely changed his view on working class consciousness and solidarity.
“At times it can feel overwhelming, and I have had many sleepless nights,” Kutlu told VICE World News over Zoom through a translator. “But I have also experienced in the best way possible the support I have had in Turkey from my fellow workers, the solidarity of the working class. It fills my heart.”
Still, being unemployed has been difficult. He recently had a baby and has struggled psychologically as well as financially, although his family, friends, and fellow workers have continued to support him.
It has also been difficult for Fatih Gürhan, another one of the dismissed workers, who recently turned 44. Factories rarely hire men his age – one of the reasons he is fighting for his old job – and he has a family to help support.
“When I was dismissed, I couldn’t talk about it for a week,” Gürhan said. “I couldn’t say it to my children, my friends, my parents. Only my wife. Every day, I would leave the house at eight, just like I used to, and come back in the evening with some sweets for my kids. Life is not cheap in Turkey, especially when you have three kids in school.”
“Eventually I told them,” he said. “It was not an easy decision to start this struggle.”
DISMISSED CARGILL WORKERS AT A PICKET ON THEIR 1,105TH DAY OF PROTEST. PHOTO: CARGILL İŞÇI KOMITESI TWITTER ACCOUNT
Organisation efforts began in 2012, by workers frustrated with declining wages and deteriorating conditions. But it was only in March 2018, after years of union membership drives, that Tekgıda-İş felt confident that it had enough support that it filed for collective bargaining status.
After the union filed for bargaining status, Cargill management immediately began resisting the effort, workers say, including by making threats that conditions at the factory would worsen if workers unionised.
Shortly after they filed for recognition, the union activists were met with bad news. On the 9th of March 2018, the Turkish Ministry of Labour informed Tekgıda-İş that it had not met the 40 percent threshold required to achieve collective bargaining status under Turkish labour law.
But union officials and workers claim that Cargill added workers from its head offices in Istanbul to the collective bargaining unit to dilute the number of union members. Tekgıda-İş’ application for collective bargaining status, seen by VICE World News, filed on four sites. The rejection letter from the Turkish Ministry of Labour lists two extra sites, including Cargill’s head office.
"Cargill essentially moved workers from its administrative office into the collective bargaining unit, therefore reducing the proportion of union members and leaving the union just shy of the 40 percent it needed," Suat Karlıkaya, a Tekgıda-İş representative, said.
Just over a month after their unionisation effort fell flat, on the 18th of April 2018, Cargill fired Gürhan, Kutlu, and 12 other blue-collar production workers. All were active leaders in the organising effort, workers told VICE World News.
Gürhan worked in Cargill’s Bursa-Orhangazi factory for 17 years before he was fired. He was open about his union membership and active in multiple union drives. He believes that Cargill managers punished him and other pro-union employees.
Despite being one of the most senior employees at the factory, Gürhan says he was passed over for promotions, which were offered to junior colleagues instead.
Before he was fired, Gürhan was assigned to work as a chemical operator unloading and stocking chemicals entering the plant. Usually, he says, there are three chemical operators rotating every three months to avoid prolonged exposure to noxious gases and chemicals. But he was forced to work there alone for four years.
“No matter how many safety measures you take, you are exposed to toxic gases,” Gürhan told VICE World News through an interpreter. “You constantly interact with dry and liquid chemicals. You always work alone, away from everyone.”
VICE World News asked Cargill about Gürhan’s claims, but did not receive a response.
“Workers were scared of joining the union,” he said. “There was an atmosphere of fear. I often encountered workers who would like to join a union but didn’t because they were afraid that something would happen to them. That they would be fired or passed up on a promotion or better position.”
Shortly after they were fired, Gürhan and 11 other workers decided to contest their dismissals in court with the help of Tekgıda-İş – two other workers decided not to contest their dismissals. In February 2020, the Orhangazi Civil Labour court decided that eight workers had been unfairly dismissed by Cargill because of their union activities, while four had been unfairly dismissed without economic justification.
The court also noted that there were “numerous resignatiations” of union membership on the exact same dates that the 14 workers were fired and that workers were scared of possible repercussions for their union membership.
All 12 workers contesting their dismissal were ordered by the court to be reinstated. But 40 months later and they still haven’t been rehired – in fact, Cargill has advertised open positions in the ensuing months.
Instead, Cargill made use of a loophole in Turkish law that allows companies to pay workers compensation, rather than let workers fired for union activities return to their positions. Kutlu and Gürhan respectively received eight months wages in compensation, as well as severance and pay for their notice period, amounting to roughly ₺44,000 Turkish Lira (£3,650) and ₺70,000 Turkish Lira (£5,800) respectively.
“Firing workers for unionising is a violation of their fundamental human rights and they need to be allowed to return to their positions,” said Burcu Ayan, an international officer at the International Union Federation, one of the labour organisations campaigning for the reinstatement of the fired workers. “Cargill does not want to allow these workers to return to their positions because they know that if they do, workers will no longer be scared of organising.”
In January, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association launched an investigation into whether human rights violations had occurred when the workers were fired.
Cargill did not respond to an emailed set of questions from VICE World News. VICE World News asked, among other things, for comment on the verdicts from the Turkish courts, why the workers were not rehired even after open positions were advertised, and if the company had any comment regarding the workers’ three-year protests. Allegations that Gürhan was forced to work with toxic chemicals and that the company had added employees from its head office into the collective bargaining unit were also put to Cargill.
The company did respond, however, to a series of questions from the United Nations as part of its investigation. In its response, Cargill defended its actions, rehashing many of the same arguments previously rejected by the Turkish courts.
One of the company’s principal arguments is that its hand was forced following a reduction of the national sugar quota in Turkey, which it claims significantly reduced demand. However, this quota only came into effect in July, months after the workers were fired, via a presidential decree.
In the case of the workers dismissed in 2018, the court found that the “employer’s sales and assets increased after the termination date [of the workers]” and that “the company continued to make profit, there was no decrease in the order and production.”
Cargill also argues that the 14 workers were dismissed based on their low performance. None of the workers said they had ever received low performance marks when asked by VICE World News. In a dismissal notice sent to one of the workers seen by VICE World News, there is no mention of low performance, and there is no mention of low performance in the court’s summary of arguments made by Cargill’s lawyers. VICE World News also asked Cargill if it could provide any evidence that workers had received or been notified that they were underperforming and received no response.
The dismissals of the 14 workers in the spring of 2018 did not happen in isolation. Between 2012 and 2015, Cargill fired seven workers active in unionisation efforts. They later took Cargill all the way to the Turkish Court of Cassation (roughly equivalent to the Supreme Court), which decided in 2015 and 2018 that all seven had been fired because of their union activities.
“After the employer learned about the trade union activities, the department managers put pressure on workers and tried to convince them to resign from the trade union,” the Court of Cassation ruling from 2015 reads. “Some workers, including the complainant, who were the leading unionists, were then fired from the job on the grounds of low performance with the aim to send a message of intimidation to all workers.”
In spite of all that’s happened over the last 1,172 days, the workers say they do not harbor ill feelings towards Cargilll. They just want their old jobs back and their rights as workers to be respected.
“We are all very different people with different views and political beliefs who have come together for this purpose,” Kutlu said. “Cargill claims that they value their workers. If that is true, why can they not correct this mistake? Just remedy what you have done wrong. We are willing to forgive. Respect workers’ right to unionise.”
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