From Women’s Rights at Work Association / Çalıs¸an Kadının Insan Hakları Derne˘ gi Turkey Bilge Seckin helped found the Women’s Rights at Work Association in Turkey in 2004. She recently visited Italy, France and Spain at the invitation of the CCC to raise awareness about union repression in the DESA leather factory.

How did you get involved in labour rights?
We formed an NGO, Women’s Rights at Work, in 2004. We started to work on women’s rights, especially for women working in the textile sector. It was a meeting with CCC people that inspired us to establish the association.

You mean the NGO was founded after a CCC meeting?
Yes. We realised that there is a lot of possibility for international work, with codes of conduct and so on. We got in touch with unions to try to understand what was happening.

With the DESA case you’ve worked closely with the Deri Is union.
I got involved with Deri Is and they hired me as an international specialist. But I found that I prefer to work with the union, not for the union. It wasn’t easy for me to work within the union, because they have their own structure.

You think it’s different from an NGO structure?
I think you can be more critical in an NGO, which contributes to the struggle. NGOs and especially women’s groups bring a gender point of view. We can inspire unions and we can usually establish a better relationship with the public. Unions have to sit at the table with employers - they have to sit and talk to them and they usually can’t explain their ideas in front of the public openly. But as an NGO you can do that. We can just be critical, but that doesn’t work for unions.

Are there particular challenges you face in Turkey?
We have very bad labour laws. We face several big problems: overtime, low wages, violation of freedom of association. But if we have good regulation of freedom of association, then the other problems can be worked out.

Is the main issue the law itself or is it lack of enforcement?
One of the main problems is that a union has to have ten per cent of a sector before it can sign a collective agreement. We also have to have union membership of 50% plus one at a workplace. Workers are usually fired before the threshold is reached. Factory owners just say “Reach that number and the union can come”, but it’s not possible to get there. And when the labour court decides in favour of workers who are dismissed for supporting a union, the owner is not required to reinstate them; they just have to pay compensation. It is such a long process – it takes months or years of struggle and even if you win there may be no union at the end of it all.

What are some of the challenges you see facing women workers in particular?
It’s not easy to begin to get them organised, but once they do get organised they never quit, as you see in the DESA case. Women like Emine…these are hard-working women and they tried to deal with their supervisor as good workers. But after that, when they saw that there was no way out, they found the union. They found us. When they were fired, they decided to stand outside the factory. They said, “We have to stay here and fight for our rights”. Most of their family members are very critical. Some of the women were criticised by their husbands and are now divorced. Fathers also criticise their daughters.

What was your experience during the speaker tour?
With the CCC people we felt like we were with people who understand better than our own friends. We are speaking different languages but we understand each other. Emine is very happy to see that people around the world are supporting the case and she is pleased to have the chance to tell her story.

What are your plans for the future?
I have a dream that we can establish an urgent solidarity network in Turkey. We have many NGOs and unions and people who are struggling for something like labour rights, women’s rights, environmental justice. But we have to do this struggle together. We can struggle together for Emine.