The launch meeting of the “Improving the Rights of Textile Workers, including Syrian Refugees in Turkey” project, jointly implemented by our union and our confederation DİSK with the Danish 3F union, was held on August 23, 2023 at the conference hall of the TMMOB building in Karaköy, Istanbul.
The meeting was attended by media, civil society organizations, associations, international organizations and trade unions.
Seyit Aslan, DİSK Executive Board member responsible for the project, opened the launch meeting. In his speech, Aslan talked about how tense the atmosphere in Turkey is, how migrants face serious difficulties and how the fear in their daily lives has increased. He underlined that DISK closely follows the problems faced by migrants and that this project is a good starting point.
After Aslan, H. Deniz Medet, International Relations Specialist and Project Coordinator of our union, took the floor. Medet started his presentation by explaining the situation and working conditions of migrant workers, some statistics in the textile sector and how migrants have become the main factor of unregistered work. He said that the vision of the project is that in the future, when migrant workers become the main factor in the textile sector, the union will be able to achieve gains faster on behalf of both the union and the workers by starting communication with the workers today.
Deniz Medet said that in line with the aims of the project, translations will be made and written materials will be produced so that migrant textile workers can better understand their rights and laws, the project and awareness-raising efforts will be disseminated through one-to-one interviews in the media and field work, and other meetings and workshops will be held in the coming months to keep the discussions on migrant workers alive and contribute to the creation of policies and solutions.
Medet stated that in our project, which started again in April, the union’s interest in the subject has increased, meetings have been attended, not only the workers’ knowledge about the union but also the union’s knowledge about migrant workers has increased. In academic research, lecturers and students were interviewed.
Medet said that in the field, face-to-face meetings were held with workers in Gaziantep and Istanbul, that workers were distant from face-to-face meetings due to the fear of deportation, that they expected more participation in these meetings as the trust between the union and key people and institutions trusted by migrants increased, but that it is currently being considered to disseminate the project and its purpose in the media and to hold meetings on online platforms in order to talk to workers without being face-to-face. He said that lawyers also provided information on legal questions from the workers they met during the fieldwork.
Medet said that in the meetings with the workers, new things were learned about the reasons and difficulties of unregistered work, that migrant workers not only have no knowledge of their rights, but also have the idea that they have no rights, which further increases the fear factor and that this is why awareness raising activities are important. He also said that the workers did not know how to file complaints to state institutions and that the union offered to help them in this regard.
The presentation was made in Turkish and translated into Arabic by Activist/Lecturer Taha Elgazi.
After the question and answer session, the meeting ended with the statement that anyone who wanted to talk about this issue could contact the union.
