Kartal municipality strike in Turkey exposes CHP, DISK and fake leftists

Collective bargaining and strikes in municipalities led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which won local elections on March 31, show the destructive role played by the CHP and the so-called “opposition” trade unions and pseudo-left groups supporting it.

On October 30, 2,000 workers in Kartal, a municipality of Istanbul with a population of about half a million people, went on strike.

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(The caption reads: “Workers in the municipality of Cartal went on strike, displaying a banner reading “There is a strike at this workplace.” Workers protesting the sale agreement cut off the union logo from the banners.)

The action was continued after negotiations between the Genel Iş Trade Union (part of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey/DİSK) and the Social Democratic Public Union of Employers (SODEM-SEN), which represents the municipalities of the thermal power plant, failed to reach an agreement that could be imposed employees.

On the fourth day of the strike, the headquarters of the Genel-Ish union accepted a sale agreement without the knowledge of the workers and against their will, which led to a huge reaction and the continuation of the strike. Other CHP municipalities in Istanbul responded by sending garbage trucks to Kartal to end the strike.

In the face of workers’ growing anger, the management of the Kartal branch had to declare that they did not accept the agreement. The anger has spread to other municipalities where collective bargaining agreement negotiations are ongoing. In addition to Kartal, the administrations of the branches of the municipalities of Maltepe, Ataşehir and Kadıköy in Istanbul were forced to announce an indefinite cessation of work from November 4.

However, on Monday morning, facing the threat of the strike getting out of hand, the management of the Kartal branch announced an end to the strike in exchange for the promise of an “additional protocol” in January or February and no layoffs.

This was an attempt to defuse workers’ anger and prevent the strike from spreading to other municipalities.

Union leaders signed an agreement that set a daily gross wage of 1,430 Turkish lira ($42), while their own proposal called for a daily gross wage of 1,900 Turkish lira ($55). Under this agreement, workers’ net monthly wages were only about 30,000 Turkish lira ($875). However, the workers wanted their wages to be 41,000 Turkish lira ($1,195) per month, as they had demanded in the project.

Even the required figure meant that workers would continue to live in poverty in the midst of an ongoing cost of living crisis. According to an October report by the Turk-Iş Trade Union Confederation, the hunger threshold to meet the minimum monthly food needs of a family of four was 20,000 Turkish lira, and the poverty threshold exceeded 66,000 Turkish lira. According to a report from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, which is run by the CHP, the cost of living for a family of four in Istanbul is 71,000 Turkish lira.

A worker told the newspaper about this. Evrensel, “The CHP, which calls itself an opposition party, wants to implement the current government’s minimum wage policy, we have problems with this demand. The opposition party, which states that “the minimum wage should not be lower than 30,000 liras,” is trying to complete this work with a base of 30,000 liras in its own municipality.”

Another worker said, “Our demand is very reasonable. The wages we demand are well below the poverty line, but the municipality is trying to condemn us to the line of hunger.”

Criticizing the government, CHP leader Özgür Özel said in July: “The wage increase is based on TURKSTAT (Turkish Statistical Institute) data. We are faced with open betrayal of the poor and disadvantaged people in Turkey by a government agency.” In fact, the policy of reducing real wages in the face of massive inflation is part of the offensive of the ruling class, supported by the CHP and other bourgeois parties.

The CHP’s response to the strike shows that it is as much an enemy of the working class as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This exposes not only the CHP, but also the pseudo-left parties and the Kurdish nationalist People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which collaborated with it in the elections.

The Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) formed an unprincipled electoral alliance with the CHP. CHP leader Özel explained it this way: “We worked with TİP in the following way. They did not put forward candidates where the CHP went hand in hand and where there was a risk of losing.”

In the face of growing worker resistance, the trade union confederations DİSK, Türk-İş and Hak-İş issued a joint press statement in early July demanding “a higher minimum wage” and “fairness in taxation.” . Following these statements, union bureaucrats organized various regional rallies. More than 100 thousand workers took part in the rally organized by Türk-Iş in Ankara on October 20.

The sale contract signed by SODEM-SEN and Genel-İş against the demands of Kartal municipality workers and the strikebreaking are just the latest incident that exposes the hypocrisy of the CHP and the trade unions. There is no doubt that similar conspiracies are being hatched against workers with a view to possible strikes in other municipalities. This is the result of a long transformation of trade unions around the world into an extension of corporations and the state.

For decades, trade unions affiliated to DİSK and other confederations imposed policies of impoverishment on workers. This attack, which has intensified in the last few years, has led to growing workers’ resistance, such as in Kartal.

According to TURKSTAT, annual inflation in October increased by 48.58 percent. According to calculations by the independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG), the real annual inflation rate is 89.77 percent. Real wages fell sharply as the government, public and private sectors set wage increases for workers and retirees based on official inflation.

After failing to raise the minimum wage in July, affecting millions of workers, the government is now preparing to raise it below the official inflation rate in January. Meanwhile, huge profits from banks and big businesses continue to fuel inflation. Amid escalating war in the Middle East, Erdogan’s government is increasing military spending from 970 billion liras to 1.6 trillion liras (about $45 billion) in the 2025 budget.

Opposition within the working class to these attacks has reached the point of explosion. In 37 municipalities governed by the CHP and AKP, collective bargaining was not completed because even the limited demands of nearly 50,000 workers were rejected by the unions.

Recently, thousands of people, including workers from Bornova, Buk and Bayrakli municipalities in Izmir; Municipalities of Mamak, Etimesgut and Cankaya in Ankara; The municipalities of Maltepe, Kartal, Avcilar, Kadikoy and Atasehir in Istanbul protested against decent wages and working conditions.

The struggle of municipal workers in Turkey is part of the international struggle of the working class, which everywhere faces social attacks such as wage cuts and layoffs. In Germany, Volkswagen, backed by unions, is preparing to close at least three factories, throwing tens of thousands of workers out of work. In the US, 33,000 Boeing workers have been on strike for nearly two months after twice rejecting a union-backed sell-off contract. In response, the company announced it would cut 17,000 jobs. In both places the workers continue their struggle by forming rank-and-file committees affiliated with the International Workers’ Union of Rank-and-File Committees.

The experience of the strike in the municipality of Kartal highlights the urgent need for workers to create grassroots committees to take control of their own struggle, independent of the unions. These committees will allow workers to coordinate and unite their strikes and encourage other sections of the working class to support them. We encourage municipal workers preparing to strike to contact us to form a grassroots committee.