'Ninety-Five Percent of Workers Killed in Occupational Homicides Precarious, Non-Union'

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Members of the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG Assembly) were detained on Sunday (January 12) in the capital Ankara, where they gathered to announce the findings of the "2019 Report on Occupational Homicides in Ankara and Turkey."

Six people were brought to the Security Directorate and released after giving statements. Kansu Yıldırım, one of the detained İSİG members, spoke to bianet about the report and detentions.

They intended to draw attention to 1,736 occupational homicides that occurred last year throughout the country and 56 occupational homicides in Ankara but the police "arbitrarily" prevented them from reading their statement, Yıldırım said.

'A policy of intimidation'

"In the detention vehicle, we read the text of the press release, which the police did not want us to read, and shared it with the public."This attempt to hamper the visibility of occupational homicides is nothing more than a policy of intimidation.

"Moreover, occupational homicides in Turkey is the most visible face of the despotic labor regime that capitalism spreads to every field of life. The slogan, 'In which war we lose this many friends of ours?' which the İSİG assembly says in every one of its statements is important for this reason.

"A direct class war occurs in workplaces every day. Employees who seek their rights are dismissed, and when they hold a demonstration in front of the workplace, they are exposed to violence by law enforcement officers."

Occupational homicides and child workers

Among 1,736 workers who were killed in occupational homicides, 1,621 were men and 115 were women, according to the İSİG report. The sectors that saw the highest numbers of killings were agriculture-forestry (442), construction-road (336) and transportation (234).

"The primary reason for this is that the pressure for production on the workers is being increased in order to accelerate the accumulation of capital and that limiting occupational safety, considering it a 'cost', in addition to the intensity of employment in these sectors."

A total of 67 children died while working, the report found, with 29 of them being younger than 14 and 38 of them being between 15 and 18 years old.

This is "embarrassing for the whole society," Yıldırım said, adding that child labor must be banned.

Refugees as a 'cheap and precarious labor force'

In the last year, 112 migrant/refugee workers were killed in occupational homicides, the report stated. They became a "storage of cheap and precarious labor force," Yıldırım said, recalling statements by capital owners in the textile sector that said, "Had there not been Syrians, we would be in trouble."

"99.9 percent of migrant/refugee workers, who struggle for living in poor sheltering, nutrition and working conditions, are employed precariously and become a target of nationalist propaganda.

"We may recall the Syrian worker Mustafa El Recep who was found dead on the roadside in Adana. He died in the factory where he worked, but his body was wrapped in a blanket by the workplace owner and three employees and put on the roadside."

Out of 1,736 killed laborers, 1,433 were salaried employees (workers or public officers) and 303 were working on their own behalf (farmers or shop owners), the İSİG report found. In other words, 83 percent of the killed workers were salaried employees. Most of them were working for minimum wage or lower, Yıldırım stressed.

'Occupational homicides are political'

"This is why we say, 'Occupational homicides are political.' More than 95 percent of the workers we lost in occupational homicides are non-union, precarious workers.

"For this reason, I find the individual actions of the workers who were dismissed because they were unionized and resist in front of their workplaces very valuable and important in terms of class struggle.

"In the end, all these deaths are a result of the measures that are not taken, the controls that are not carried out, the capital's ambition for profit and the state policies." (HA/VK)