For eight months, the workers at the Ileri Deri tannery have been carrying out a very hard struggle to gain the right to unionization.
This is a small plant, located in the town of Corlu, in Thrace, a region which has recently become a zone of strong industrialization, with numerous small, medium and large businesses, especially those linked to the leather industry. Union membership is extremely low: it is habitual for the bosses to dismiss workers demanding the right to unionize. The bosses of Ileri Deri were not the exception: they fired all of the workers. The brothers and sisters did not give up and have continued, for the last eight months, keeping up their struggle at the gates of the plant. They demand their reinstatement and full union organizing rights.
The victory of this struggle could open the road for generalized unionization. Other plants, under the impact of this struggle, have begun to make this call.
The organization “Workers Struggle” of Turkey is carrying out an active campaign in order to keep this struggle alive, to which the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International adheres.
