Why isn't EKS supporting this important workers struggle in Turkey?

Peter "Australian: therefore a liar and a cunt"
Posts: 542 Joined: 09-03-06 Location: Canberra
Submitted by Peter on 17 August, 2007 - 03:46.

70 000 Turkish public servants are working 18 hour days and not getting overtime pay yet the normally verbose Devrim has nothing to say about it. I'm shocked.

Quote:
Associated Press

Turkish imams in call for overtime
August 17, 2007

ISTANBUL: Turkey's tired imams should be given overtime pay to compensate for 18-hour days leading the nation's Muslims in prayer, the leader of an imams' union says.

Some 70,000 government-paid preachers rose at 4am to begin the daily call to prayer and did not finish until midnight, said Huseyin Demirci, the head of Diva-Sen, one of the smaller clerics' unions representing 2000 imams.

Turkish public servants were paid overtime for exceeding a normal five-day, 40-hour week but imams, also government workers, were excluded, Mr Demirci said. In Sunni Islam, imams lead prayers five times a day, starting at dawn and often finishing late at night.

"Imams are tied to their mosques from early morning until midnight and on national holidays. We want the overtime money we deserve for our extra effort," Mr Demirci, a former preacher, said.

Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, has secular laws, but a government agency runs the nation's mosques. The agency has exclusive authority to recruit and assign imams.

Imams made 840 Turkish lira ($760) a month, Mr Demirci said, making them the lowest-paid public servants.

"We don't get housing, which makes things really hard," said the imam of a mosque in north-eastern Turkey.

As well as prayers and religious matters, he said, his job included maintaining and protecting the mosque, and cleaning the compound because Islam requires places of worship to be clean.

"Before religious holidays, I clean more than 30 windows and all the chandeliers inside the mosque. Thanks to God, my wife helps me with that."

The call for overtime was opposed by the country's largest imams' union, which said clerics knew what the job entailed when they applied.

Ahmet Yildiz, the head of Diyanet-Sen, which represents 36,000 preachers, said the Government could compensate the clerics for working in the holiday season, but not during morning and night prayers.

But he said the low salaries had deterred clerics from pursuing careers in mosques, leaving 6000 mosques without an imam.