“Human Rights Resource Centre – Cargill Response”, 14 August 2020

The sugar industry in Turkey is highly regulated …  In late March 2018 [when] the Turkish Government announced that Cargill Turkey’s quota would be cut in half …  leadership felt it necessary to reduce headcount at the facility… 

Local plant management … determined which employees had required skills that were critical to keep the facility running.  Sixteen employees with lower performance and repetitive skillsets were selected for redundancy.  Union membership was not a factor in making these redundancy decisions.

Of the 16 employees who were impacted, 14 filed civil lawsuits against Cargill … In four of those decisions, the Court found that Cargill Turkey did not discriminate on the basis of union status. In two of the cases, the employees were not unionized … And in the other eight cases, the Court … [ruled] discrimination would be presumed …  Cargill Turkey has paid all of the relevant severance required by the Court orders…

… [T]he facility has experienced the need to fill a few positions in the last two and a half years …  There is nothing to keep the former workers from applying for open roles; they have not done so…

 … [IUF] and Tekgıda-İş filed a Specific Instance with the …OECD… which was managed by the National Contact Point (NCP) in the U.S …  Cargill … actively engaged with the NCP in good faith throughout the process … the NCP ultimately determined that the parties were not able to bridge their differences as to what an agenda should entail…