I was unemployed for about three years before the coronavirus pandemic started. During this time, I followed job postings daily. Although I lived in Ümraniye, I searched for jobs [all around Istanbul] and was even willing to move to another area. I was constantly scolded by my husband. I was subjected to insults from him about why I was not working. I was in a state of exhaustion.
I followed the job postings on notice boards and at industrial sites and visited multiple worksites. I filled out application forms in at least 20 factories in Dudullu OSB. Sometimes I left my three-year-old child with my 10-year-old child while I looked for work and sometimes I took both my children with me. Eventually, I came across an ad that was in favour of hiring a 44-year-old woman like me. This was the Dardanel Ton factory.
When I started working, there was a two-shift system. In a short time after, the three-shift system was introduced due to new recruitments. Approximately 350 workers are currently employed at the factory. Of these workers, 95 percent are women. We were thankful that we were able to find a job during the coronavirus crisis. After a month, we realised that the site feels more like a prison than a factory.
We have friends who are still breastfeeding their babies and were supposed to be on maternity leave. But we have to work. We are struggling to support our homes with minimum wage (440 Euros). I pay 1,300 lira rent (143 Euros). Out of my colleagues, the lowest rent paid is 1,000 lira (110 Euros). Each of us have about three or four children. The wages we receive are not enough for their nutrition and education costs.
At Dardanel Ton, we followed whatever rules they set for us. The three-shift system ruined our balance, psychology and our social lives. Without realising, we found ourselves working 12-14 hour shifts on weeknights. We are being made to work for 12 hours through forced overtime. The 11 pm to 7 am shift is especially like prison life. Between shifts, all kinds of precautions are taken for workers to avoid contact with each other at the entrances and exits.
When we take the shuttle service to work close to the time that another shift is to end, we are kept waiting on the bus and are taken inside only after the other workers leave. At least 15-20 workers from each shift have been infected with Covid-19, but these have been covered up and we were still made to work. The cases are kept hidden, our lives are disregarded. When we object, we are threatened with: “there is the door, anyone who doesn’t like it can leave”.
We are being disciplined through the notion of unemployment. Even the security guards at the doors and inside the factory operate as prison guards. They scold at the slightest appeal or complaint. We are subjected to verbal threats and abusive insults. Like all women workers who have been looking for a job for months or even years, I endure this situation in order to be in employment. Not for a single day did we take time off during the pandemic.
Each of our colleagues who were infected were told to “stay at home”, and each of them were left without support. Production did not stop. The factory is constantly growing, and our wages are nothing in comparison. Our health and our lives are disregarded. We have no value. The services, dining hall, toilets and dressing rooms that we use are all breeding grounds for the coronavirus. We did not receive a penny of support from neither the state nor any social institution.
They force us to be grateful and try to discipline us by simply saying that “it is destiny”. It is the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, which has been in power for 18 years, that brought us to this position. It is the AKP government that has left us destitute for coal, a pack of tea, a pack of rice. We want to be free of this life. The only way for this is our unity. It is time to be united, because only then will we have better working and living conditions.
Bülent Falakaoğlu
Hakkı Özdal
