Sacked TEKEL workers keep up pressure with demonstrations

Support for your struggle from Socialist Party (Ireland) MEP - Joe Higgins

Dear friends,

I write to express my solidarity and that of the Socialist Party (Ireland) and the Committee for a Workers’ International (www.socialistworld.net) with the strike of TEKEL workers in Turkey.

I had the honour of campaigning alongside your fellow Turkish workers in Ireland who were massively and illegally exploited by Gama Construction. Their strike won tens of millions of euro in backpay and was an inspiration to Irish workers and socialists.

The privatisation and shutting of your factories is an attack on working class people. The government’s offer to you, which gives you a choice of no job or work for less than a year in another state institution for lower wages and conditions, is an insult.

You are right to fight against these redundancies and to oppose the privatisation of these massive enterprises. Privatisation, as you have experienced, results in private profits being put before the interests of working people.

I salute your bravery in standing up against the brutality of the state in the course of your struggle. I understand that riot police have attacked you and have arrested some of you. I will use my position to publicise these outrageous attacks on workers’ rights and to encourage people to support you.

I urge you to continue your struggle and to link up with other workers who are also under attack from the government, such as the firemen and railway workers, and to build a united struggle against these privatisations and attacks on workers’ rights.

Through international solidarity, we will try to actively support your campaign and bring pressure to bear on the government. Please let me know of any way I can assist you.

Yours in solidarity,

Joe Higgins

Member of the European Parliament

Socialist Party (Ireland), Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI)