Necla Akgökçe

The Novamed strike has ended. The boss of Novamed and Petrol-İş Syndicate have signed a collective contract on December 18, 2007, Tuesday at 11 am. In the afternoon of the same day, at 3 pm, the poster “There is a strike in this office” which had been in the Novamed office of Antalya Free Zone for 448 days was taken down.

The contract is for three years. The wages which were approximately 350 euros before the strike were increased by 9,20 percent and raised to approximately 383 euros. Starting from Janury 1, 2008, the wages will be raised 5 percent in euros annually. The increase rates will be 4 percent in both 2009 and 2010 and a 300 euro social package payment will be made to the women workers.

Novamed was the work place which belonged to the multinational German Fresenius Medical Care in the free zone. The factory had 316 workers. 81 of them were on strike while the others continued to work inside. It was difficult to obtain advanced economic rights under such conditions. The bosses agreed to the syndicate. The working conditions of the women workers who were struggling for more than a year were, to a certain extent, ameliorated.

For many of those who equate a strike’s success with wages, these words may not be convincing. Anyone who has an idea about the free zones, which can be defined as the patriarchal exploitation centers of global capitalism, however, knows how hard and meaningful it is for a syndicate to exist in these zones.

Despite the fact that the number of people who were on strike was less than the ones who were not, it is said that the Novamed strike is the first accomplished strike as such in Turkey. The campaign coordinated by the Women’s Platform for Solidarity with the Novamed Strike has had a significant role in this success.

The women workers of Novamed have gone back to work on January 1, 2008. Their working conditions are better than before, but they still continue to experience the difficulties imposed by the multinational firms who prefer women’s labor in free zones. There is no reason for us to believe that patriarchal pressures are eliminated. Nevertheless, women in this process have gained strength against the father and husbands by increasing their chances of bargain.

However, the main problems they experience due to their status as women workers has not been solved. Since their primary job is seen as housewifery, they and the other women workers continue to be the secondary workforce. Due to the fact that the hand skills and swiftness brought by the act of tuning are not considered as a qualification, they are not taken into consideration for the wage evaluation systems. Women’s labor power, therefore, is the cheapest one while positions women hold are low paid, temporary, and unsecured jobs. This is not only as such in Turkey; a similar situation prevails in the rest of the world.

According to the report “Global Employment Trends for Women” published on March 8, 2007 by the International Labor Organization (ILO), of the 2,9 billion workers worldwide in 2006, 1,2 billion of these were women. It is also emphasized that the number of unemployed women worldwide has reached 81,8 million, which is the highest rate to date.

Women’s participation to the labor force in the countries of the European Union (EU) has increased in recent years. According to the March 8, 2007 report of the EU Statistics Commission Eurostat, women’s employment rate for 15-64 years of age in the first quarter of 2006 was 57,1 percent. Women’s employment in the EU is said to be aimed to reach 60 percent till 2010. After the evaluation that in five years out of the 8 million jobs in the EU were taken by the women, it is said that these developments have been made possible thanks to the amelioration of the care services and affirmative action. These numbers are inspiring; it makes everyone engaged in women’s employment to think that women’s unemployment can be prevented.

A feminist standpoint, however, necessitates one to ask whether it is the gender based support initiatives or something else behind this massive increase.

While ILO statistics show us that there is an increase in the number of women employees worldwide, they also demonstrate that there is a correlative decrease in women’s unemployment. This is not surprising. Especially in underdeveloped and developing countries, the number of women becoming unemployed due to privatization is added to that of the ones who are left unemployed in agriculture because of the structural accommodation programs, leading to a process of worldwide housewifization. The temporary, part time, subcontracted, call on, and home based flexible working have replaced the full time and secure jobs. This leads to a seeming increase in the employed women population.

I would like to make the situation more concrete with a story. A multinational drug firm, a body politic of the Petrol-İş Syndicate, grows by means of merger. The growth of a multinational drug monopoly does not implicate an expansion for the workers in the neoliberal era. The firm, using the factory’s move from the European side of Istanbul to a farther away place in the Asian one as a pretext wants to decrease the number of employees. Since women have to do housework and since being in the street during late hours at night is dangerous for them, they quit their work due to the far away distance. When the factory moves to the Asian side, there is only one women employee who continues to work. The factory closes the packaging section, where the employees were mostly women. Very poor Kurdish women who are called in demand take over the packaging. These women workers work for three days on a daily wage to do the packaging. They don’t have insurance, a syndicate, or social security, and their wages are very low. So can we say that these women have a job? I don’t think so, but there are also people who would disagree with me.

The permanent and stable jobs enabled women to stay outdoors more, to get out of the family hell, and realized the separation of housework and other jobs. In such a job as the aforementioned, however, a part of the woman is always at home. Flexible jobs lead women to spend less time in the factory or at work and the fact that there are several types of jobs in a workplace increases the competition between women. Short working hours at the workplace and competition hinders women’s cooperation for common causes. That is to say, woman’s participation to work life as such not only enervates her, but also deepens patriarchal means of oppression against women.

Therefore, there is a need for a serious analysis of the global neoliberal policies in terms of feminist politics. We cannot analyze the sentence “Women hold the 6 million out of the 8 million jobs” without feminist doubt. Such questions should accompany this analysis: What kinds of jobs are these? Do women strengthen by working at such jobs? Who benefits from women’s labor at such jobs? Do men benefit from this?

Partial and temporary jobs are also common among women in the EU countries. While 32,9 percent of women were working at temporary jobs in 2006, this number decreases to a very low level as 7,7 in the case of men.

What kinds of jobs are these? They are jobs related to flexible working conditions such as computer, accounting, and daily cleaning. As can be understood from the quality of the jobs, they are mostly home based jobs with a low income and low social status due to their part time nature. Since women do these jobs at home, they are also engaged in housework and caretaking. It is of course men who benefit from all this work.

The West is thought to have eliminated the unemployment of women by flexible jobs. The lately published reports on women by the Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations foresee flexible working models against the struggle in women’s unemployment. Such solutions which strengthen patriarchy do not seem to be reasonable solutions for the feminists.

The loss of social rights increases dependency on husbands

Neoliberal policies, in the context of the state’s downsizing, defends the privatization of public, health, and caretaking services and their transference to the global service networks. While this situation increases the caretaking labor handled by women, it also leads to women’s unemployment working in these areas. The loss of a job not only causes women to be economically more dependent on men, but also deprives them of their social security, insurance, and retirement rights. The loss of women’s own social rights, thus, increases dependency on the father and the husband.

The privatization of public service, the change in information technologies, one of globalism’s trademark, and the minimizing of distances through the Internet caused the reappearance of domestic labor, one of the oldest professions of women, which had gained widespread increase during the industrial capitalist era, worldwide, but especially in developed capitalist countries. This domestic labor, however, is different from the former one which had nearly diminished after World War II. The poor women of the Eastern Block, who became unemployed after capitalist restoration which started after the dispersion of South Asia, Latin America, and the Soviet Union, come to “serve” the West.

Most of these women are educated. As is well known from similar examples in Turkey, there are doctors, nurses, engineers among them who have not been able to find jobs in their home countries. Most of them speak English, they are poorly paid, and are deprived of social security while they commonly face sexual harassment.

To sum up, gender inequalities are at the center of the neoliberal economies. The world economy grows by feeding on this. While the women in central capitalist countries carry the burden of many job sectors through flexible working arrangements within the labor laws, they become the primary actresses of the jobs in the South and East where undocumented work, patriarchal exploitation and sexual violence is quite common.

It should not be an exaggeration to state that these policies unite the destinies of women working in both the East and the West. Women seem to be working, but they are in grave poverty.

Privatization and women’s unemployment

Women working in Turkey have also been a part of this. Contrary to the situation in the world, women’s unemployment in Turkey has risen in recent years. In a study she has conducted on women’s situation in the labor market (1), Gülay Toksöz conveys the number of women aged 15 and over in the labor force as 24,776 adding that participation to the labor force in Turkey is 46,8 percent. Women’s participation to the labor force is 24,9 for women whereas it is 71,5 for men. According to this, while men’s participation has decreased little over the years, women’s participation shows constant decline. The resolution of Turkey’s agriculture due to structural adaptation programs and the unemployment of women, who work as free family laborers, losing their job in the cities is a significant determinant in this issue. Most women economist is of the same opinion in this issue.

The population of women who become unemployed after losing their jobs in agriculture either become housewives or work in temporary, part time, in call, home based jobs after they come to the city. Betül Urhan states that having work done from home produces a significant advantage in production value especially for work owners in the textile industry (2). In 1989, a textile firm is stated to have had 15 thousand home based housewife workers in addition to its 400 permanent workers. Similarly, a gum firm is said to have had 1000 home based women workers in addition to the 60 permanent workers for packaging etc. These women workers define themselves as “housewives”.

I believe that the 25 year long privatizations which have gained significant momentum during the AKP government have a determining role in the increase of women’s unemployment. Most women in Turkey used to work in the public sector. Many women, however, were left unemployed or many who did not think of retirement had to leave their jobs because of privatizations. Özgün Akduran, in an analysis of the state of women workers in Tekel’s privatized work places, states that a part of the women who had been sent to other factories due to the closure of certain departments left their jobs (3).

In an interview we have conducted with the women workers for the Petrol-İş Women’s Magazine in the Kırıkkale refinery before the privatization of Tüpraş, we observed that what women feared most was losing their jobs. A woman who had been working at Tüpraş for 14 years commented on this as such: “The privatization of Tüpraş is a loss for Turkey, but Tüpraş is where I work and I, as a woman, will be losing my independence with its privatization. Being a woman in the world is already difficult. It’s even more so in Turkey. Women have more difficulty in finding jobs”.

Women’s concerns proved right. Indeed, as is the case in many privatizations, 800 workers were fired. Most of them compulsorily retired, some of them could not find jobs. Jobs like cleaning and kitchen work were given to subcontractor firms by some work places within the privatization of the public sector in order to decrease the labor expenses and ease the privatization by eliminating the syndicate. While the percentages for using subcontractors in 1994 was 11,3, this number had increased to 20 percent in 1999. Many women who were permanent workers lost many of their rights, their wages being the primary loss, after working under subcontractors.

Now let’s listen to the women at the Batman branch of the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO): “When we started working on January 2, we saw that our employer had put up papers all over the place. 700 people were fired and were immediately asked to leave the work place. The ones who were fired worked under subcontractors”.

550 workers were given back their jobs with the intervention of the syndicate, the rest of them are still unemployed. A fired woman worker’s words summarize the situation: “I was sacked. I am currently unemployed, I sit at home and my husband doesn’t work either. We live on debt, living is difficult, dealing with an unemployed husband is more so”.

The privatization of banks, where women employees are in the majority, and bank mergers, also left many women unemployed. The situation of women who have lost their jobs due to these are still not among the topics looked into.

There is no need to say that due to the sexist structure of the work market during dismissals, women, especially those over 40, have almost no chance of finding another job compared to men.

There is, unfortunately, very little research on privatizations and women’s unemployment. The statistics do not provide us with enough information either. What women researchers who define themselves as feminists and many women’s organizations do for the people made poor by the neoliberal policies is to head towards projects of poverty funded by the IMF World Bank in order to enable the perpetuity of the exact same policies.

What does gender mainstreaming hide?

Neoliberalism brings forth its own policies of equality. Struggle to enable women’s empowerment, which has its roots in the feminist movement, has been shoved aside both in work life and in political and cultural processes. The gender mainstreaming policies accepted in the EU in 1999 replaced the policies on women and equality.

These policies prevalent in work life, syndicates, and managements, are conveyed as a step further of the feminist and egalitarian policies. We have no doubt that just like mainstream economy, a main stream view of equality is also shaped in a patriarchal society by and in favor of men.

There are numerous projects in the EU in order to enable gender equality. Most of these focus on such issues as equal opportunity, congruity of the family and work life, informing men on social roles, rehabilitating men who resort to violence, gender and health etc. With the EU and World Bank funds, men in the remote corners of the world “are educated on nonviolence” whereas women become job owners and “are emancipated” through the support of women’s enterprises.

The gender sensitive approach of the international fund centers cannot surely be explained with their love of women and stand against sexism. They want to increase the management productivity by eliminating the differences. This policy is also compatible with the structure of the multinational firms which plan the world economy. Many people from different ethnicities and gender work in these places where the administration is in the central capitalist countries taking the whole world under their exploitation zone with their production and distribution chains. Social dialogue and work at peace is a must for maximum profit.

Let women understand men, men understand women, employees from different nations and ethnicities understand each other. Let there be no conflict so that there is maximum profit, a growing management, and content and happy men and women employees.

In almost all of the global frame agreements made with the multinational companies which claim to organize work life according the labor front, the 100 numbered equality contract of ILO (equal amount of pay for the same job) and the 111 numbered discrimination agreement have been summoned under the title of nondiscrimination in employment and proceed after the regulations related to child workers. The exploitation women experience due to their gender is, thus, blurred and made invisible under a common definition of discrimination.

The women and equality offices which have proliferated in the syndicates after the 1970’s (though not in Turkey) have been replaced by structures entitled “gender issues”. Women are again the ones who handle the work here, but men, especially in administrative positions, also join women’s meetings. Moreover, women’s magazines which were used to be published for women’s empowerment have opened their pages to men who, having gender perspective, cannot keep away from meddling in such issues. Last May, I participated to the women’s commission meeting of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Union (ICEM), which is the world organization of Petrol-İş Syndicate. The report related to the situation on the women working in the mine sector in South Africa was presented by a man who was also the head of ICEM.

We do not have a different situation in Turkey either. Gender based work has been conducted with the EU accession process without the establishment of women and equality offices in work places and worker syndicates, the construction of women’s organizations, and women’s empowerment through quota allocation or similar other support policies in syndicates. Most of the conducted work underscores social dialogue.

There is little work related to the women workers’ situation in different sectors in Turkey. In 2007, the Öz-İplik Work Syndicate in Kayseri conducted a questionnaire in order to find out about the problems of the women employees working in the textile industry in Kayseri, which was later shared with the press. The name of the project was “The Project of Ameliorating the Working Conditions of the Women in the Textile Industry through Social Dialogue”. One common request arising from the questionnaire conducted by 299 women, both married and single, was the opening of a daycare center. This is all good up till this point.

One of the questions directed to the women workers, however, was as such: “What will be the amount of your monthly contribution to the daycare center?” With this question, a right which is supposed to be given to women by the social state as a part of women’s social rights was eliminated. Women were expected to contribute financially to the daycare center that they demanded and this was presented as something normal. Social dialogue was such a thing; women workers had to sacrifice equally as the boss in order to establish work at peace.

I would also like to give an example from the Novamed process. The Novamed strike, as you know, started with 83 women and two men. Women were working in the production, it was them who were despised and faced inequality in wages because they were women, and them again who stood up against this. From the beginning, however, the international syndicates mentioned the two men and 83 women employees working at Novamed. Apart from the March 8 protest letter, the German Chemical Industry Association, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Union, and even the International Trade Union Confederation, which acted with the efforts of the Platform for Solidarity, never forgot the two men in their support messages. Almost all of these syndicates has gender sections.

There seems to be a neoliberal feminism lurking around with the rise of the gender policies and EU supported projects on increasing women’s employment. We, on the other hand, need a feminism which challenges patriarchal structures in all areas of life, we need an interfering feminism. This is true at the factory, at the office, in the street. This is true as long as there is an oppressor-oppressed relationship between men and women. Feminist politics works on such basis and defends women’s freedom. Feminism belongs to women, it is seperatist.

References

1- Prof. Gülay Toksöz, “Toplumsal Cinsiyet Perspektifinden İş Piyasalarında Mevcut Durum ve Örğütlenme Sorunları”.

2- Assist. Prof. Betül Urhan, “Sendikal Örgütlenme Bunalımı ve Türkiye’deki Durum”, Petrol-İş Yayınları.

3- Research Assistant Özgün Akduran, “Özelleştirme ve Tekel Çalışanı Kadın İşçiler Üzerindeki Olası Etkileri”, paper presented at the graduate student conference of the Turkish Association of Political Sciences.

 

From Amargi- Issue 8