In the early hours of January 30, Turkey’s Metal Industry Employers’ Association (MESS) and three trade unions (Turk-Metal, Birlesik Metal-İs and Celik-İs) signed a two-year sectoral level collective bargaining agreement, covering 130,000 workers in 179 enterprises...

As a metal worker put it bluntly, “The mentioned gain looks like a great success, only due to our current misery,” adding, “We are the people, who take whole burdens of the country without a weekend holiday of two days, other social rights and convenient working conditions. Is 2,500 Turkish Lira [around US$675 a month] enough for a family of four?” According to the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions, to which Turk-Metal belongs, the poverty line for a family of four is 5,238 Turkish Lira (US$1,396) a month...

The two-year agreement came days after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan banned the sector-wide strike scheduled to begin on February 2. On January 24, the Turkish government specified the 179 workplaces, where strike action was banned on the grounds of being “prejudicial to national security”, including factories owned by multinationals such as ThyssenKrupp, Bosch, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Renault and Siemens...

The struggle of the Turkish metal workers is part of the growing militancy of their international sisters and brothers against starvation wages and deteriorating conditions, which recently exploded in Serbia, Romania and Greece...