260 workers employed at the Smart Solar plant in Gebze, where the class struggle union Birleşik Metal-İş (United Steel Workers) of Turkey is organized, went on strike against the boss’s attempt to impose zero wage increases. The plant is located in Gebze, an industrial hub right near Istanbul. After 113 days, they signed a contract, securing pay raises. More importantly, the boss’s attack, where he fired 47 workers, including workers’ representatives, was countered successfully by the resoluteness of the Smart Solar workers. The strike began and ended with exactly 260 workers, with no losses. This 113-day strike by the Smart Solar workers, carried out with great patience, determination, and organization, should set an example for the entire working class of Turkey, demonstrating once again that no one is strong enough to force the hand of the organized worker.
How and why did the strike begin?
The workers in Smart Solar said: “We have no option but to win, and to leave behind the legacy of a fight where we have not yielded to the boss”. And finally, they signed their collective contract on February 8th, after enduring every single attack from their boss. On October 22nd, each one of the 260 workers, without a single exception, had gone on strike against the boss’s imposition of zero wage increase. The Smart Solar boss was counting on the anti-worker Medium-Term Program that the government is imposing on the entire working class in Turkey. He was also putting forth the excuse that business was bad, and was dictating a zero wage increase to the workers. The workers’ demands, on the other hand, were a living wage and social rights. What triggered the strike was more the boss’s dictates than the workers’ demands.
The Smart Solar workers and the Birleşik Metal-İş Union Gebze Local no. 1 did not buy into the boss’s excuses, and did not shy away from a fight. In line with class struggle unionism, they set up the strike tent and had the picket captains wear their uniforms without hesitation. The struggle of the Smart Solar worker, which would eventually inspire the whole country, began this way!
The Smart Solar worker fought on many fronts!
The workers in Smart Solar had become unionized through an important strike and factory occupation in 2021. And they have been fighting heroically ever since the union entered the plant. In this struggle for a dignified life and better working conditions, they found not only the individual boss of Smart Solar, but the entire rule of the capitalist class, with its judges and armed apparatus. The Smart Solar boss made his moves from day 1 onwards, counting on the rule of the capitalist class. And the capitalist state acted exactly like the boss hoped. Trusting the support of state power and despotism, the Smart Solar boss did everything he could to break the strike and tire out the workers. He continued contract manufacturing illegally in the city of Kayseri. The workers went all the way to Kayseri, more than 700 kilometres away from Gebze, and found out about the contract manufacturing at the spot and documented it with photos. But the courts only watched this illegal move, thereby giving it tacit support. But the Smart Solar workers did not lose their determination. Instead, they escalated their actions by blocking the trucks carrying goods out of the Gebze plant.
The courts, who were completely silent in the face of the strike breaking in Kayseri, ruled within a single day at jet speed for the boss’s truck to get out of the plant. The despotic government’s police also attacked the workers, so that the boss can keep on strike-breaking. Bu using the police, they tried to intimidate workers who were blocking the company trucks. The workers raised their voices against strike-breaking in front of the Vespa Solar plant in Kayseri, in the Smart Solar plant in Izmir, and in front of the central office of the company in Kavacık. As if all his dirty deeds up until then were not enough, the boss fired 47 workers illegally, including the workers’ representatives who were taking action against his own unlawfulness. His goal was to fire the leading workers and thus scare the rest, so that he could finally break the strike and move on with production. But he was not able to. The Smart Solar workers did not give up or break their ranks, but protected all their fired coworkers.
United workers are invincible! No one can force the hand of the organized worker!
The entire order of capitalist rule, with its judiciary and police, united against the 260 workers, but could not undo the workers’ unity for 113 days. All their moves to break the strike - the reports, threats, the police attack, the firings - none of them worked. The Smart Solar workers united further around each other and their union in every attack. Every time the boss tried to divide the workers, their organization strengthened even further.
And the Smart Solar workers, from the beginning to the end, were not left alone against the order of the bosses either. The strike tent was always full of workers visiting from other factories. As the Smart Solar workers’ struggle went on, voices of solidarity rose from many different plants - not only plants where Birleşik Metal was organized, but even from different sectors. The voice of the Smart Solar workers went beyond even the national borders and rang in Bulgaria, where the company’s boss has important investments and connections. The Bulgarian workers also took a solidarity action together with the Revolutionary Workers Party (DIP) from Turkey.
The Smart Solar workers’ strike for jobs, bread, and freedom showed the path forward!
They were perhaps not aware of this when they went on strike, but the Smart Solar workers had not just entered the struggle for a collective contract in a single plant. The Smart Solar strike had become an important part of the struggle for jobs, bread, and freedom waged by the entire working class in Turkey; and the Smart Solar workers had become the vanguard of this struggle. And the Smart Solar workers ended their strike with their dignity and pride intact. They went into the plant as the pride of Turkey's working class, without having bowed down to the boss once and without leaving any of their coworkers behind. More importantly, the Smart Solar workers have come to realize that they were not fighting against just an individual boss, but the entire rule of capital. Having demonstrated that no one can force the hands of the united workers, the Smart Solar workers will continue to take part in the ranks of the organized struggle of the working class with this consciousness, much more strongly and much more organized!
As the Revolutionary Workers Party (DIP) in Turkey, we visited the Smart Solar workers on the 102nd day of their strike with our Chairman Sungur Savran and the General Secretary of our sister party in Greece, EEK (Workers’ Revolutionary Party), Savas Michael-Matsas. In his address to the workers, Savas Michaell-Matsas said that he brought the greetings of the working class of Greece from across the Aegean, and that they have been following the struggle of the Smart Solar workers from day 1 onwards, as if it were their own strike.
The DIP Chairman Sungur Savran also addressed the workers after Savas Michaell-Matsas and emphasized that the real fight against the bosses’ class, which oppresses the workers through courts and armed forces, should be for the political power of the working class.