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On May 2, President of Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited South Korea on the invitation of South Korean President MOON Jae-in. According to the press, during his visit Erdoğan will meet with executives of many Korean multinational companies, including: Hyundai, Rotem, Hyundai Construction, Posco, SK, Hanwha, LG, and Daelim.Here, SK and POSCO are notorious to the Korean and Turkish working class for their frequent attacks on workers’ rights, especially the freedom of association.
In 2012-2013, workers at SK Group’s Daiyang SK company located in Çorlu joined Birleşik Metal İş Union. Afterward, company management brought workers from Korea to break the workers’ strike in violation of Turkish labor law and mobilized the police to attack the striking workers with baton and tear gas, resulting in many workers being injured and arrested.
As a more recent example, toward the end of 2017, at the Turkish POSCO Steel plant of world’s fifth biggest steel producer POSCO Steel, headquartered in South Korea, 80 workers were fired just because their union affiliation. When workers and union officials tried to protest dismissals and union rights violations, police used violence against union officials and workers and they were detained. Even though the union had majority membership in the factory, collective bargaining certification of the union was prevented through collusion of employer and the Labor Ministry. In Korea too, POSCO has carried out all kinds of unfair labor practices to avoid collective bargaining with democratic unions, even stuffing precarious workers into vans to drive out to isolated areas where they will be forced to withdraw from the trade union. Further, POSCO is avoiding converting subcontracted workers to regular, permanent status despite a court ruling and instead has instructed subcontractors to cover-up POSCO’s illegal dispatch labor practices.
In Hyundai plant in Turkey, workers are working in a no-union situation. Many times in the past, workers’ attempts to unionize were prevented with dismissals and threats.
There is no established union in any Korean company in Turkey.
All these examples, are in violation of basic human rights as well as international labor standards in ILO Conventions 87 Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise and 98 Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining. But during the meetings of Erdoğan together with executives of these chaebol companies, they wouldn’t talk about difficult working conditions and these rights violations. To the contrary, maybe Erdoğan would give gurarantees to these chaebol conglomerates that in order to keep working conditions and wages low, they will prevent unionisation.
In July of last year President MOON, Jae-in made his first entrance into the international stage at the G20 Summit in Hamburg. Looking at the G20 Leaders’ Declaration adopted, there is a special section on “Sustainable Global Supply Chains” in the first part “Sharing the Benefits of Globalization.” President MOON and President Erdoğan agreed to this, a promise to uphold labor and human rights in supply chains. It is also a promise to carry out the international community’s consensus on standards for labor, human rights and the environment in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the ILO Tripartite Declaration of principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy. Further they resolve together with the G20 leaders to encourage multinational corporations to conclude International Framework Agreements (IFA). As member states of the G20, Turkey and Korea are obligated to honor this and uphold their responsibility to realize corporations’ labor and human rights due diligence in their supply chains and ensure remedy to victims.
On behalf of Korean Metalworkers Union (KMWU) in South Korea and Birleşik Metal İş in Turkey, we call on President Moon and President Erdoğan in one voice: if Korea and Turkey are to be responsible members of the international community fulfilling their obligations, they must make sure that Korean chaebol companies pay attention to the working conditions of workers in their supply chains domestic and globally, and guarantee the freedom of association to workers so that workers themselves can improve their working conditions through the strength of unity!
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