2 May, 2012
The ICEM’s Turkish affiliate Lastik-İş, the Petroleum, Chemical and Rubber Industry Workers’ Union, achieved a ground-breaking, sector-wide collective agreement in the country’s tyre industry on 17 April, just prior to announcing that it would strike.
With collective bargaining beginning on 10 January, negotiations covered over 4,000 rubber workers, including staff employed at multinationals such as Bridgestone, Goodyear and Pirelli at four plants in Izmit and Adapazari.
The new agreement brought new awareness inside Turkey’s industrial relations with a first-ever company-financed pension scheme achieved in this round of collective bargaining. The companies will contribute an equivalent of 3% of workers’ salaries to the scheme, while wages will increase 11.5% in the first year of a two-year contract.
Lastik-İş President Abdullah Karacan
With this, employers have agreed to increase salaries by 14.5% in total to meet the pension plan. The union had demanded 16% at the beginning of the negotiations, while employers had offered only 3.4%.
Lastik-İş managed to preserve and enhance the purchasing power of its members, and made no compromises in inserting language on provisions related to flexible employment inside the tyre plants. The union also did not retreat in the face of consistent demands from employers for lower wages for new hires.
According to the agreement, temporary workers will be able to join the union and be granted a 20% salary increase, which never has happened in the history of tyre negotiations.
The agreement was unanimously endorsed by the union’s rank-and-file membership through mass meetings after negotiations concluded. “Over 63 years of experience and self-confidence, Turkish tyre workers and their union have managed to continue to develop remarkable advances and to preserve trade union rights,” said Lastik-İş President Abdullah Karacan.