ISTANBUL - Workers at the MKB Rondo factory in the Kimyacılar Industrial Estate in Tuzla have announced that they have started a strike.
Workers at the MKB Rondo factory in the Kimyacılar Industrial Estate in Tuzla, Istanbul, have started a strike on the grounds that their demands for a wage increase have not been met. In the strike led by the Cellulose-Is Union affiliated to the Turkish Confederation of Trade Unions (Türk-İş), the workers demanded an 80 percent increase in wages and announced that they did not accept the boss's offer of 45 percent.
'THE CHIPS ARE DOWN'
Ufuk Toprak, the representative of the workers, explained their reasons for going on strike in the following words: “I have been working as a production operator in this company for about 10 years. Our process in the factory started in January 2023 and today is the second day of our strike. We are trying to live on salaries slightly above the minimum wage and now the chips are down. We started our unionization process to put an end to this situation. In the wage negotiations, we came to the table with 130 percent and the employer responded with 20 percent. We went as low as 80 percent, but the employer's insistence on 45 percent blocked the negotiations. We want to have a union room in the factory and we will not give up on these demands. This resistance is not only the resistance of MKB Rondo workers, but of all oppressed workers. We will win by uniting.”
'WE WANT OUR CONDITIONS TO IMPROVE'
Sevil Köse, who has been working at the factory for three years, said: “We have no social rights here. We work with an average salary of 20 thousand Liras and our working conditions are very harsh. We started to organize and fight against this situation. We have not achieved any results in the contract negotiations that have been going on for eight months, so we decided to strike together with our union. Our only goal is to improve our conditions.”
MKB Rondo workers stated that they will continue their actions to make their demands heard and to get their rights.