"Levi's Turkish Levi's supplier behind worst union-busting case in years, labour group says", 21 June 2024

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Nova was referring to the long-anticipated results of the WRC’s investigation into allegations of severe repression of workers’ freedom of association, including verbal and physical intimidation, union-busting, mass firings and wage and severance theft, at...Özak Tekstil, one of Turkey’s largest apparel manufacturers. Levi Strauss & Co. is the sole buyer at the plant, though other Özak Tekstil outposts also supply jeans to nameplates such as Hugo Boss and Zara owner Inditex. By dismissing most of the nearly 500 workers who had protested for months over what they say is the right to choose a union other than the factory’s established one, the WRC says that Özak Tekstil breached not only Turkish law and international labor mores, but also Levi’s code of conduct.

Levi’s has pushed back at the WRC’s report...saying that it “contains several mischaracterizations and omits a number of relevant details.” It said that it has a longstanding commitment to supporting safe, productive workplaces and that it takes any allegations of attempts to undermine freedom of association “extremely seriously.”

But what happened in Urfa is the worst case of union-busting he has seen in years, Nova said. In December, following the layoffs, Levi’s wrote to Özak Tekstil stating that the firings were a zero-tolerance violation of its standards and that it would take “appropriate next steps to uphold workers’ rights” if the workers weren’t reinstated without retaliation, the report noted...The following month, Levi’s informed the WRC that it would be ending its relationship with Özak Tekstil, which received a formal letter of termination in February.

The situation took a turn in April, the report said, when Levi’s informed the WRC that it would continue to conduct business with the Urfa factory without requiring Özak Tekstil to rehire the workers. Levi’s told Rivet that month that it would be working with the plant on a “conditional basis,” one that was dependent on the manufacturer’s fulfillment of a remediation plan that included fixing oppressive working hours, improving health and safety and addressing the routine verbal onslaughts known as mobbing. Those were the same issues that striking workers claimed that Öz İplik-İş, the incumbent union, had failed to protect them against, causing them to decamp for the less established Birtek-Sen...

It was the wave of “threats, harassment and pressure” that workers said ensued after they “exercised their right” to choose an alternative to what they characterized as a “yellow union”—meaning a worker’s organization that is heavily or unduly influenced by an employer instead of representing the genuine interests of its members—that resulted in the 80-day strike that began in the final weeks of November...

Levi’s said that the preservation of the Urfa facility’s remaining 400 jobs was one of the drivers behind its decision to keep working with Özak Tekstil, and that it had been in frequent contact with factory management to “firmly express” its support for the lawful expression of workers’ voices and the right to freedom of association.

“After several months of engaging to find solutions and wanting to ensure there is no further job loss, we decided to continue working with Özak on a conditional basis that depends on management’s fulfillment of a detailed remediation plan,” a spokesperson said. “We reduced our production orders to align with the facility’s capacity and are conducting regular visits to the facility to ensure compliance with the remediation plan.”...

Nova called Levi’s desire to protect jobs “obviously disingenuous” because it didn’t protect the jobs of the hundreds of workers who had already been discharged...

Neither can there be meaningful corrective action in a factory that has “destroyed” a union—one that most workers chose to join—by firing those same workers unless they are re-employed, he added. By December, 78 percent of the Özak Tekstil workforce in Urfa had joined Birtek-Sen.

“...Until the firings are reversed, there cannot be remediation. Pretending this all didn’t happen and having some training on freedom association is meaningless. That is not remediation, it is a fig leaf.”...

Both Özak Tekstil and Öz-İplik İş have claimed that the workers were fired not because they were protesting but because they were cutting work. Nova said this was false because people can’t strike without being absent and Özak Tekstil sent letters to workers saying they would be fired if they continued striking. And though Özak Tekstil has pointed to a Ministry of Labour investigation endorsing the mass dismissals as proof that its actions were by the book, the WRC called it “one-sided” and “flawed,” not least because nearly everyone it interviewed was an Öz-İplik İş member.

The report said that even after axing the protestors, Özak Tekstil continued to retaliate against its former workers by illegally withholding statutory severance compensation payments and entering “falsely disparaging information” about them into public agency records. The supplier also used this denial of severance...and blacklisting to pressure the fired workers into coercive “settlements” in which they agreed to relinquish the right to reinstatement and back pay, it said...

“If Levi’s had been serious about enforcing its standards, it wouldn’t be dropping them now,” he said. “They are the sole buyer. They have enormous leverage. They could exercise it tomorrow. They could compel Özak to offer reinstatement. They could have real remediation of these egregious abuses. They could compel Özak to sit down and talk with the independent union that [most] of the workforce, even in the face of management threats, chose to join.”