The strike suddenly turned into a countrywide shutdown. Deliveries all over the country came to a screeching halt as workers started sending their strike photos and their meetings. Pictures of parked vehicles and workers gathering to have coffee became viral as the company scrambled to fulfill its “delivery on time” promise to its clients. Workers sent solidarity messages, “Don’t start your car, don’t be condemned to hunger,” from all social media platforms. Each city or unit would post their strike pictures, then call on another location, inviting them to join the strike, which was promptly answered, and another area or town was invited to form a chain of sites joining in the strike. Soon, the workers of Trendyol stopped the entire operation in the country.
Turkish Online Shopping Workers Win Big After a United Struggle
The management at one of Turkey's biggest online shopping sites, Trendyol, refused to pay decent wages to poverty-stricken workers. While the sales and profits went up due to hard and uninterrupted work even under the current pandemic, the owners refused to recognize the workers’ contribution to the success.
The carriers who are “hired” to drive the guaranteed packages primarily to the retailers stopped work when the corporation only gave an 11% increase to their earnings. This amount is far below the inflation rate that even the non-reliable government figure calculates the inflation around 30%. Some economists have estimated the current rate of price hikes at 80%.
On January 24th, the carriers stopped work and stopped the distribution of packages. Instead, they formed a convoy of their vehicles to drive around the central offices of Trendyol in Istanbul.
The workers labeled the 11% increase offer as the “increase of poverty” as the country mocked the insignificant raise. They announced that until their demands for a decent wage hike, they would not be delivering anything for Trendyol.
Calculating that even with the new offer, the drivers would still be working under the minimum wage in the country. To counter the corporation’s offer, the demands were raised by the workers to include:
1. 50% increase for “completing the delivery” payment.
2. Elimination of the “second slot.”
3. No retaliation to any worker that participated in the strike
4. Prevention of any organized or top-down harassment of workers.
The strike suddenly turned into a countrywide shutdown. Deliveries all over the country came to a screeching halt as workers started sending their strike photos and their meetings. Pictures of parked vehicles and workers gathering to have coffee became viral as the company scrambled to fulfill its “delivery on time” promise to its clients. Workers sent solidarity messages, “Don’t start your car, don’t be condemned to hunger,” from all social media platforms. Each city or unit would post their strike pictures, then call on another location, inviting them to join the strike, which was promptly answered, and another area or town was invited to form a chain of sites joining in the strike. Soon, the workers of Trendyol stopped the entire operation in the country.
It took only three days to bring the greedy owners to their knees.
The owners and managers gave in to a 38% pay hike yesterday. With this promise, the workers started congratulating each other and praising the solidarity and total participation of workers around the country to secure the victory.
Some messages read, “We will not allow them to steal the labor of even a single one of us!”
Sendika.org News (MB)
