TPI Composite (XCS Composite) announced on October 10 that nearly all of its workers had been laid off. It was announced that 405 workers would be laid off from the company’s factory in İzmir-Çiğli and 1,735 workers from its factory in İzmir-Menemen. The workers have been on strike since May 13.
The mass layoffs are an example of the working class being made to pay the full price of the economic crisis and are part of a global assault on jobs and living conditions.
Founded in the United States in 1968, TPI Composite is one of the world’s leading companies in wind turbine blade manufacturing. Approximately 12,000 employees work at its facilities in the United States, Mexico, Denmark, Germany, China, India, and Turkey.
In August, TPI’s US headquarters filed for bankruptcy. Following this, TPI Composite’s facilities in Turkey were handed over to XCS Composite, newly established in Dubai and believed to be a shell company. Workers claim that the company has been stripped of its assets. Despite these developments signalling impending layoffs and attacks on workers’ accrued rights and compensation, the Petrol-İş trade union has offered no means of struggle.
At the beginning of the year, during collective bargaining negotiations, workers demanded a 120 percent wage increase due to high inflation and real wage losses in Turkey, while the company offered a 30 percent increase. The workers rejected the offer and went on strike on May 13. The company later raised its offer to 80 percent, but the workers refused to back down. In August, following TPI’s bankruptcy filing in the US, the Petrol-İş announced that it would accept the 80 percent raise, but this time the company refused.
In December, it was announced that at least 1,000 workers would be laid off from two factories. The workers are aware that the trade union is not only failing to oppose the company’s preparations for this attack but is complicit in it. When Ahmet Baranlı, General Secretary of the Petrol-İş, arrived at the workplace on October 15 he was met with a harsh reaction from striking workers. In a video posted by Evrensel newspaper on X, a worker reacted to Baranlı, saying, “You never valued the workers’ voices because that’s how unionism works in Turkey... While people’s severance and notice pay were being taken away, your president said, ‘Are you working for me?’”
The anger of TPI Composite workers toward Petrol-İş is not solely due to the recent layoffs. Workers are employed at poverty-level wages because the union is collaborating with the company.
The workers say their monthly wages are around 23,000 Turkish Liras (TL), which is the minimum wage, and their daily meal allowance is 122 TL. According to a report by Türk-İş Confederation, of which Petrol-İş is an affiliate, last month the hunger threshold for a family of four was 27,970 TL, and the poverty threshold was 91,109 TL.
Working conditions are unbearable. A TPI worker speaking to Evrensel described the widespread health problems: “The chest diseases hospital here is full of workers from this factory. Those who go to the hospital are asked, ‘Are you from TPI?’ Almost everyone who works here or has left the job has asthma or COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]. When illnesses are detected, managers call the workers in and first offer them a transfer to another department. If you refuse, they fire you for health reasons.”
Another TPI worker said, “The company lays off at least 30 workers every year due to health issues,” while a worker from the factory’s main molding unit said, “We are entitled to one carbon mask per day and glasses every six months. We are given coveralls twice a day. However, the unit we work in is 70 degrees. The equipment provided is neither sufficient, nor is it at a level that can protect us from illness. There is no limit to the chemicals we are exposed to.”
TPI workers have repeatedly fought against these unrestrained conditions in past years. However, these struggles have been sold out by the union every single time.
In 2021, during the collective bargaining process, a strike was called at both factories. However, the Petrol-İş signed a sell-out agreement without informing the workers before the strike. The workers, who learned of the agreement from their shift supervisors, reacted against the trade union. Workers who criticized the trade union administration were then dismissed by the company.
In 2022, a wildcat strike broke out at both factories in response to low wage increases and poor working conditions. The workers rejected the Petrol-İş’s call to return home. Although the company initially responded with layoffs, the workers continued their struggle. Their demands for wage increases, no layoffs, and the reinstatement of those who had been laid off were accepted.
Workers accuse the trade union officials of failing to take measures against the mass layoffs. The liquidation of jobs and attacks on social rights around the world are being carried out with the cooperation of trade union apparatus that function as extensions of the state and companies.
Petrol-İş, which pseudo left groups refer to as a “combative trade union,” offers workers nothing but acceptance of defeat and filing individual compensation lawsuits in court. At the same time, the government is escalating its social offensive against the working class in order to transfer resources to corporations, banks, and militarism.
The mass dismissal of over two thousand workers is an unacceptable attack. The notion that companies have the “right” to arbitrarily dismiss workers must be rejected. Ending this threat requires the nationalization of companies to serve the needs of society, not private profit and wealth. The International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is fighting for workers worldwide to unite against the attacks of capitalist companies and states on a common program and organization independent of the union apparatus.
The Socialist Equality Party, the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which launched the IWA-RFC initiative, explains in its program the objective basis for the indifference of trade unions to workers’ conditions and their collaboration in workplace closures as follows:
The trade unions are controlled by and serve the interests of a substantial stratum of middle-class functionaries whose personal income is derived from their active and conscious role as facilitators of the corporate exploitation of the working class.
During the past decades, the trade unions have played a major role in breaking strikes, lowering wages, eliminating benefits, cutting jobs and shutting down factories. During this process, despite the loss of membership, the revenues of the trade unions and the salaries of their functionaries have continued to rise. Insulated from and indifferent to the hardships suffered by their membership and protected by the “dues check-off” and labor laws from rank-and-file protests, the unions are tied by a thousand threads to the corporations and the capitalist state.
The way forward for TPI Composite workers is to take matters into their own hands, build rank-and-file committees independent of the union leadership, and unite their struggle with their class brothers and sisters across Turkey and around the world.