123 employees from Turkish Airlines’ (THY) business partner, Do&Co, were fired in November because they were union members

One of those workers who were fired because they used their right to organize told us about what he has gone through.

Do&Co corporation has been partnering with Turkish Airlines as airline catering service since 2007. Despite being proud of its “kitchen” and using its rewards as advertising materials, it is clear that Turkish Airlines Do&Co can easily fire the workers contributing to this “pride” and these “rewards”. One of the recently fired workers, a 29-year-old dad told his story to soL.

THE WORKING CONDITIONS

According to the former employee who was a union member, the working conditions for Do&Co workers are worse than the other flight attendents. “Normally the flight attendents can’t work more than the specified working hours because of the rules set by civil aviation. However, we were working with a heavy schedule and working much more than a normal flight attendant within the flight. Moreover, within the hours the flight attendents rest, we were given extra work in the company and various other places”, he says.

While the flight attendents are allowed to be on board for 110 hours/month maximum, for the Do&Co workers it may be 120-130 hours, despite they are paid less than the others.

“While the working hours for other flight attendents start to be counted when they arrive to the airport”, he says, “our working hours start when we are on board”. As he adds, although Do&Co employees work for 12-13 hours, their payments are calculated based on 7-8 hours.

USING THEIR RIGHTS TO ORGANIZE

“These working conditions and unfair wage system”, says the 29-year-old former employee, “urged us to ask the question what we can do about this and think that we should get organized”. Then, they decided to become unionized and came to terms with the Confedaration of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK, in Turkish). Many people become unionized in a short span of time.

“However”, he explains, “after one of our co-workers gave the list of unionized people to the company, I was called to the company urgently in one of my off days. They made me wait in the lobby for two hours and afterwards, I was told that my contract was terminated due to market shrinkage. One day later, they called 122 other workers who were union members to a hotel and told the same thing”.

“THEY SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID”

The former employee of Do&Co adds that they “played very important roles in bringing the reward for Turkish Airlines, Europe’s best business class airline catering”, for the fourth time. Instead of receiving the right to work in better conditions after valuing our job that much, we are called to a hotel to get fired. We have started the process of lawsuits and we hope to be reemployed as soon as possible, and with better conditions”.

The last thing he wanted to say to his former coworkers is that “they shouldn’t be afraid. We are going to continue our struggle with our friends suffered from this situation”.