Türk Telekom claims union is sabotaging company

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Türk Telekom administration claims union is sabotaging company

Türk Telekom CEO Paul Doany in a press conference on Tuesday claimed that acts of sabotage had been committed against his company between the hours of 3 and 7 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Doany was speaking to a press conference on a strike his company's employees started Tuesday morning. Collective bargaining talks concerning 26,000 Turkish Telekom employees failed on Tuesday during talks that started on Monday and lasted until the early morning hours of the following day; the workers have now announced a strike.

Members of the Turkish Telecommunication Workers’ Union (Türkiye Haber-İş) came to their workplaces early Tuesday morning, but only to put up legally required notices declaring that Türk Telekom employees are on strike. This was the first strike in the history of the Turkish telecommunications giant.

Maintenance and repair in communication networks will not be taken care of during the strike. The activities of the banking and communications sectors are expected to be worst hit by the strike. However, talks between Türkiye Haber-İş and Türk Telekom will continue.

At yesterday’s press conference Doany said the company pays its employees good salaries, adding that they thought their offer to the union was also very good. Doany said the company had offered a 10 percent raise in salaries despite an 8 percent increase in the inflation rate in 2007. Türk Telekom proposed an additional 4.4 percent increase for the next year; however, the parties failed to agree. In addition to disagreement over the pay raise percentages, the issue of wages of some 5,000 technicians and assistant technicians was another point the parties failed to agree on. Doany said the company had offered improvement to the technicians’ wages, but the union was not satisfied.

Doany said he believed the strike would not last for very long, or that at least a resolution would be reached through a mediator. Doany said although he respected his employees’ right to go on strike, he expressed that this did not include the right of harming company property.

Doany showed pictures of fiber optic cables, vital to the functioning of the Internet, which were intentionally cut in various cities.

Haber-İş President Ali Akçan strongly denied the allegations in a conference. “This is slander. Our union has nothing to do with any of these incidents. Let them find those responsible, and we will punish them together,â€