A Levi Strauss & Co. supplier in Turkey has embarked on a corrective action plan to improve working conditions at its factory in the city of Urfa, several months after it came under fire for allegedly denying its employees the right to choose their own union and, weeks later, dismissing the hundreds who went on strike, albeit with severance for those who qualified.
It’s only after this roadmap has been completed that Levi’s will resume “active” orders, said Muhammed Necmeddin Hocaoğulları, director of human resources and corporate social responsibility at Özak Tekstil, one of Turkey’s largest apparel manufacturers.
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The Urfa facility, which counts the denim giant as its sole customer, is finishing up orders that were placed before 470 workers, claiming inhumane work hours, verbal and physical intimidation and an ineffectual “yellow” union, agitated for the right to transfer their allegiance from the more established Öz İplik-İş to the comparatively upstart Birtek-Sen.
Levi’s had investigated the allegations, Hocaoğulları said, resulting in “homework” for the manufacturer that included fixing problems with excessive overtime, improving hygiene and safety and addressing the systematic and routine verbal abuse known as mobbing. To “hear employee voice,” Özak Tekstil is installing a whistle-blower mechanism that has a hotline that pipes “directly to headquarters,” he said. A digital version may follow.
“We believe we have [room] to improve ourselves and we will investigate and [take action] if there is any harassment or pressures that are [not acceptable to us],” said Hocaoğulları, who joined Özak Tekstil in January, a month after the protests began, though he said his appointment had nothing to do with “the situation” but was part of a larger restructuring process. “We will take necessary precautions and managers of the factory will be punished if we believe that there is harassment.”
Hocaoğulları denies that Özak Tekstil had tried to interfere with its employees’ choice of union. By Turkish law, unions must meet certain membership thresholds, such as representing 1 percent of workers in the relevant industry, before they have the authority to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. Not only did Birtek-Sen lack the required numbers, he said, but Turkey also disallows multiple collective bargaining agreements in the same enterprise. Öz İplik-İş, an IndustriALL Global Union and IndustriALL European Trade Union affiliate, had already brokered one for the Urfa factory, along with another at a sister facility in Istanbul.
“If you want to bargain with us, you need [to] first go to the ministry and [get] authorization from them,” Hocaoğulları said. “If your authorization [comes through], then come to us, we will sit [at] the table and we will make an agreement, we will bargain and we will handshake.”
Levi’s confirmed that it has decided to continue working with Özak Tekstil on a “conditional basis,” one that’s contingent on the manufacturer’s fulfillment of a “detailed remediation plan” that tackles freedom of association, working hours and health and safety. The decision was made after several months of “engaging to find solutions and wanting to ensure there is no further job loss,” a spokesperson said, adding that the Red Tab purveyor has been in frequent contact with factory management to “firmly express our support for the lawful expression of workers’ voices and workers’ right to freedom of association.”
But labor rights groups, such as the Worker Rights Consortium, whose forthcoming report about Özak Tekstil concludes that it violated the legal rights of its Urfa employees and therefore Levi’s supplier code of conduct, are less than convinced.
Responding to Levi’s statement, Liana Foxvog, the Washington, D.C. watchdog’s director of supply chain strategies, said that factory management has “obviously ignored the message” because it has “done nothing” to “reverse the massive violations of workers’ associational rights” that it committed. “There has been no remediation of the freedom of association violations at the factory,” she added. “None of the terminated members of the new union have been reinstated.”
The Clean Clothes Campaign, the garment industry’s largest consortium of trade unions and workers’ rights organizations, has also taken aim at the jean manufacturer, saying that Levi’s “broke its promise” to use its leverage to reinstate the “unlawfully terminated” workers—and if that was not possible, to retract its orders.
“For many weeks, the brand has left urgent letters by the union, and by supporting unions and labor groups around the world, unanswered,” it wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “In the meantime, the Özak/Kübrateks factory in Şanlıurfa, which had only a small workforce left, has been hiring new workers who are not Birtek-Sen members to complete its orders for Levi’s.”
(There is disagreement over Özak Tekstil’s recent transfer of its assets to Kübrateks, another subsidiary of its parent company Özak Global Holding. Hocaoğulları said that it was doing so for administrative reasons, including qualifying for government incentives. Birtek-Sen, on the other hand, insists that it’s to cast off the company’s “tarnished” name.)
The Clean Clothes Campaign said that it is “abundantly clear” that Levi’s is “failing to prevent, mitigate and remediate a very serious instance of union busting at its immediate supplier.” Instead, it’s propping up Özak Tekstil’s “defiant position by breaking its promises to the Birtek-Sen union and continuing to produce at a factory that has actively intimidated, harassed and dismissed workers for exercising their rights.”
Levi’s declined to respond to the claims.
Hocaoğulları said that Özak Tekstil asked striking workers to return to work, but only a handful responded. He said that they “didn’t come back to work, didn’t open a lawsuit, didn’t make any complaints” but instead continued to demonstrate. “As the management of the company, we believe that it is just not a positive attitude,” he said. “It was just like a hostile attitude.”
Fulya Pinar Özcan, head of international relations and sustainability at Öz İplik-İş, said that the union has worked to address feedback from the Urfa plant’s remaining 400 employees, including electing new worker representatives.
“There were significant complaints regarding the previous shop stewards’ effectiveness in conveying workers’ concerns to us,” she said. “Thus, transitioning to elections empowers workers to choose representatives they trust, ensuring better representation and accountability.”
Özcan said that the union will be prioritizing “direct engagement” with workers through regular visits and an ongoing evaluation of their needs and concerns. It’ll also be taking “proactive steps” to enhance communication and collaboration, including establishing an industrial relations roundtable that will facilitate regular discussions between workers, shop stewards and occasionally management, “fostering a more inclusive and transparent decision-making process.”
“We understand the importance of stability and security for workers, and we will spare no effort in finding the best solutions for the workers’ movement,” she said. “We believe this approach will lead to better outcomes for all stakeholders.”
Birtek-Sen has saved most of its ire for Levi’s. Writing on X this month, it said that the San Francisco-headquartered firm has turned its back on Özak Tekstil workers who have been “resisting for months for their union rights and for humane and dignified living conditions” and has colluded with the “Özak boss despite all the pressure, threats and insults against the workers.”
In another recent statement, it urged Levi’s to remember its “international responsibilities” and take action to remedy the rights violations of the fired workers. These include their reinstatement, the recognition of their right to choose a union and the payment of employment wages.
“While it is obvious that the dismissed workers have not been reinstated, the blacklisting of workers continues, many of them are unemployed and the rest are condemned to precarious working conditions,” it said. “We do not accept that the brand, which is so-called sensitive to workers’ rights, ignores this situation.”
