'Intervention' in the Class struggle- a case study: TEKEL and the ICC

Reflecting on the TEKEL strike

After the Türk Telekom strike in 2007, we held a public discussion in our press on what it meant for the working class. This time we would like to do so again on the issues raised in the TEKEL strike. We believe that it is important for workers to reflect on what lessons can be learned from these experiences, and to discuss how these lessons can be applied in future struggles. We want to use this article to ask some of the questions that we think could lead to a worthwhile discussion.

Who controls strikes?

The first question that comes up is the role of the unions, and workers’ controlling their own struggles. Many workers in the TEKEL strike realised that the union would not struggle for them. We saw many demonstrations of anger against the union workers, and several attempts made by workers to form a committee outside of union control as detailed elsewhere in this issue. As nice as it may have been to see workers kicking the union leaders of the stage on the January 17th demonstration, actions like this do not in themselves pose an answer to the real question about who is controlling the strike. Anger at the role that unions play in strikes is common. When we look around the world we see a lot more of it in other countries than here in Turkey, but we expect to see a lot more of it as the crisis deepens, jobs and living standards continue to be cut, and the unions continue to fulfil their roll of selling workers to the bosses.

There is a large difference though between anger and protests against the union and workers taking control of their own struggles. Of course, if workers are not angry with the way the union is running things, they won’t want to take control of a strike. The anger is a first step, but only a first one. The alternative to the union controlling a strike is the workers’ controlling it for themselves through mass meetings and strike committees of elected delegates. These, however, won’t come out of nowhere, and certainly the unions won’t set them up. For this reason, we feel that it is the task of communists to constantly argue for mass meetings in workers disputes, not rallies held where people sit and passively applaud what union bosses say, but real workers meeting where every worker can speak, and the workers themselves take decisions.

What sort of Committees?

When workers in the TEKEL strike talked about forming committees, it is important to consider what the role of such a committee is. Militants can’t just set themselves up as a strike committee and start to run a strike. Only a committee elected by workers at mass meetings can do that. For communists the goal of militants in a struggle is not to set up a new more radical leadership, but to promote the active conscious involvement of workers in their own struggles, and the way that workers express themselves is through their traditional forms, the mass meeting and the strike committee. That doesn’t mean that those who tried to set up a committee were wrong. Far from it, they were very right. It is necessary for militants in a struggle to co-ordinate their activity. Isolated, as an individual, one worker alone can not talk to every other striker, and can not have all of the ‘correct’ ideas. It is through discussion with others that we develop our ideas, and while one person is just an individual, a small group are much better equipped to address wider groups of workers.

One of the things that for us typified this struggle was that we didn’t see one leaflet produced by workers addressing the strikers as a whole. Of course, the left, including ourselves, all had plenty of leaflets to give out, but there was nothing that came from the workers themselves that discussed how to take the struggle forward. In other countries this has been a feature of major struggles. Groups of militants coming together put out their own publications to explain to other workers how to take the struggle forward. This is something that can be done without a large group, and in a way, it is the way to gather the people around militants, and to put forward the arguments for mass meetings amongst the wider workforce.

What was the strategy?

Possibly one of the main reasons why nobody was putting out their own leaflets was because nobody had an alternative strategy. In the early days of the struggle, workers were focused on calling for the union to organise a general strike. When it finally came, it was even worse than we were expecting it to be. After the farce of 4th February the term general strike is left as little more than empty words. Strikes were sporadic and isolated, and strikers were left alone to be victimised for showing solidarity. Even the demonstration in Ankara was significantly smaller than the previous one. Afterwards workers were demoralised, and ended up sitting in their tents waiting on legal manoeuvrings. It was very clear that there was no strategy except for putting pressure on the union for a general strike, and when that ‘happened’, nobody had any idea at all how to go forward. There was no strategy at all.

How can workers win struggles?

For us in the current period workers can not win struggles on their own. The assault on jobs, working conditions and wages is a class wide attack, and needs a class wide response. To build for a class wide response, workers need to take things into their own hands. Everybody at TEKEL knew they needed solidarity. To call on other workers for solidarity we need massive delegations going to other workplaces to call for solidarity action directly. The only time during the TEKEL struggle was when there was talk of distributing a letter written by one of the TEKEL workers to workers at the Sugar factory outside of their workplace. It is not something that individual workers can do on their own. It comes back to the previous point about needing groups of workers to come together and argue for the tactics needed to win, groups that can put forward the arguments for this sort of action.

What positive things can we draw from the TEKEL struggle?

There are many positive things that we can take from the TEKEL struggle. It shows that workers are still willing to struggle, and that the bosses can not have it all their own way. It reinforces the understanding that the unions are not on the side of the working class. It became quite clear on the April 1st demonstration where thousands of riot police were there to protect the union from its members. The recognition amongst the TEKEL workers in particular, but amongst workers in general that solidarity is necessary and the way to win is massively important.

It is not just a case though of commenting on the positive sides, but of trying to understand the difficulties that we still face, and to discuss how to overcome them. We welcome any contributions, written or in person, on the question.

Sabri

Istanbul May Day Speech of Struggling Workers
This speech we are publishing have been made, in front of 200,000 people, by the workers who occupied the platform during the May Day demonstration in Taksim Square, Istanbul, a previously banned demonstration area itself, forcing the Turk-Is chairman Mustafa Kumlu and other trade-union bureaucrats to flee. The fact that the workers who occupied the platform are the ones who have been shaking Turkey with their struggles in the last few months, that these workers have committed this act fully with self-organization and in a completely unified way, and the message of their speech, in our opinion has a massive importance for the working class movement, and shows the way to victory for the entire proletariat.
ICC
We are the struggling workers from the Tekel, Istanbul Water and Sewers Department, Samatya, Fire Department, Esenyurt municipality, dustbin and ATV-Sabah news corporation struggles.
All of us are struggling in order to fight against working and living like slaves, subcontracting, the 4-C and unsecure working conditions. We are together so that we can carry the fire lit by the Tekel struggle, by establishing the channels of a united struggle. We have established the Platform of Struggling Workers in order to establish an example for all our worker brothers and sisters by displaying an example of the most advanced form of class solidarity, and in order to stop the slogan “we shal win by uniting” from just being a slogan and to create what it concretely corresponds to.
Capital produces unemployment, insecurity, lack of future and misery for the working class. Capital produces wage-labor. We know that, while struggling against the 4-C, against insecurity, subcontracting, unemployment, we also have to struggle against capitalism which is nothing but the order of wage-slavery. The true emancipation of the working class lies not only in rising partial demands against unemployment, hunger and misery, but in expanding the united class action against capital which produces unemployment, poverty, insecurity, hunger, poor health and so forth.
This May Day shall be one marked by class demands, one in which the voice of us the struggling workers is reaches all our worker brothers and sisters. We shall win the May Day, just as we won the Taksim square.
Taksim was not opened due to the permission given by the bourgeoisie and its state, it was opened with the accumulated struggles of the working class who insisten on being in Taksim despite all the suppressions and attacks, it was opened with the Tekel struggle, it was opened by the workers’ struggles coming after another, it was opened by the anger of the hunger army against working and living like slaves growing up so much as a dynamic of organizing and struggle that it made capital lose sleep. We have liberated Taksim, now Taksim is without a doubt a May Day area. Next is for the May Day platform to be taken by those who truly deserve it. May Day and the May Day platform belongs to the working class, it belongs to militant workers, to struggling workers. The speech/platform does not belong to the treacherous trade-union bureaucracy who stabs the class from the back whenever the class movement rises; it should belong to the Tekel workers who gave working class struggles a new breath, it belongs to the firemen who rised the demand of secure work and working like human beings against subcontracting and firings, it should belong to the ISKI workers, it should belong to the Samatya building workers who aren’t paid their wages and who are forced to work likes slaves, it should belong to the Marmaray workers, it should belong to the Esenyurt municipality workers who lost their jobs because they unionized, it should belong to the ATV-Sabah news corporation workers, it should belong to the Platform of Struggling Workers. The May Day platform should not belong to those who beg for permission every time from the capitalist state, to those who are a barricade not against capital but against the working class. It should belong to the working class who fill the squares with its class demands.
Thousands are hungry, thousands are unemployed. There is your capitalist system!
Down with the order of wage-slavery!
Workers, not union-bosses to the platform!
No to working like slaves, no to living like slaves!
Workers unity shall defeat capital!
Long live class solidarity!”

A Workers Films Festival?
We are publishing this text written by the Platform of Struggling workers, explaining the event that occurred on the 2nd of May during the Workers’ Film Festival in Istanbul, between the workers who had been invited to this event, and the organizers of the festival. We want to stress the importance of the clarity expressed in this article by the struggling workers who have been haunting the trade-union bosses in Turkey recently.
We, as the Platform of Struggling Workers (National Tobacco and Alcohol Monopoly (TEKEL) workers, Istanbul Water and Sewers Department (ISKI) workers, firemen, Sinter metal workers, Esenyurt municipality workers, Samatya building workers, Marmaray building workers, dustmen, workers from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and workers from the ATV-Sabah News Corporation) were invited to the opening ceremony of the Workers’ Film Festival on the 2nd of May. When we arrived at the Ruya Cinema from our march from the Taksim Square, they said that they reserved the seats on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th lines to the struggling workers. After seating us, they called us to another room to discuss the platform. We had actually agreed on how the speeches were to be made there began a bargain regarding whether we could or couldn’t protest first of all Mustafa Turkel, the chairman of Tek Gida-Is, and other trade-union bosses from Turk-Is whom they had invited as a part of the protocol.
We, as the Platform of Struggling Workers, clearly expressed that we can not remain silent in the presence of union bosses who form a barricade against the workers struggles, who take the content out of workers struggles. And we declared that when the union bosses would speak, we would silently leave the theatre. After agreeing with this, we saw that they had seated the trade-union bosses in the seats they had said were reserved for us. They told us to wait in the side of the saloon, and get out if we don’t like it. Thus we as the struggling workers protested this situation, and left the theatre shouting slogans “Down with the union bosses”, “We don’t want sold-out unions”, “We will win by struggling” and did a one hour long sit-in in front of the Ruya Cinema.
The organization committee of the festival came during the sit-in, and criticized what we were doing, claiming what happened was misorganization, not something intentional.

We do know, however, that this is but a move made to prevent us from protesting the trade-union bosses by silently leaving the theatre. The President of the People’s Houses , Ilknur Birol, said “After this point, we will consider what you are doing as actions against the People’s Houses” about our sit-in. He said “If you are to criticize the union, where to do it set”. If we, as the struggling workers, can’t protest the union bosses who betray the workers, who sell out the struggles, who form a barricade against class struggle in a festival which takes its name from workers and which claims to tell the story of workers’ struggles, where is the place to do this?

We denounce the invitiation of trade-union bosses who are an obstacle to all struggles to such an event. To all workers and friends of labor we declare that we protest the invitation of trade-union bosses who have betrayed the class to all event taking its name from the class and the struggle, and we announce that we will go to all events participated by the trade-union bosses and protest this treachery. We the struggling workers who gave the platform on May Day to its true owners, believe that only struggling workers and revolutionaries who fight for labor and pay for this should be on all platforms.

Platform of Struggling Workers