The strike in Turkey continues

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

d, 04 Oct 1995 23:21:09 -0800


ANKARA, Oct 2 (Reuter) - About 73,500 workers from Turkey's state village
affairs department begun a strike on Monday, joining in the ranks of 260,000
other striking public workers, officials said.

"We will not be making sacrifices any more," Bayram Meral, head the largest
labour confederation Turk-Is, told a cheering crowd of the workers at the
department's head office in Ankara. "Let them not stop the workers (from
strikes)," he said, referring to demands from Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's
caretaker government that strikes be suspended until a new cabinet was formed.

The nationwide strike, now joined by over 330,000 public workers, comes as
Ciller is trying to form a government to replace the one that broke down on
September 20.

Meral said strikes would continue and the total number of striking workers
would reach some 350,000 by mid-October if the government did not raise its
annual pay rise offer of an average 5.4 percent while inflation is targeted
70 percent. Thousands of public workers from the industries of sugar, mining,
petroleum, iron and steel, leather, paper, printing, ports, railways and
roads have been striking since September 20.

The strike will be one of the more pressing issues facing any new government,
and Turk-Is is already flexing its muscles, warning would-be partners not to
concede on the pay rise issue.

The trade unions called the strike September 20 to force Ankara, which is
trying to stick to an International Monetary Fund-backed austerity programme,
to match pay rises to Turkey's spiralling inflation.

---
 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)