We will not be slaves to the boss,
they chant. These workers at a factory in southern Turkey
produced jeans for the fashion giant
Levi's. They joined a new union and went on strike
last year,
claiming they had extremely long hours and low pay in
miserable conditions.
Turkish police moved in to clear the protest.
Bozak Textio, the Levi's supplier in Turkey,
fired all of them for not coming to work.
Roughly 400 workers made-up almost half of all its factory
staff.
Funda Bakush was a union Rep.
She says she's been out of work now for the
last six months.
We couldn't even afford to buy the pants we were
producing.
Did you expect Levi's as a company to support you?
We expected more from Levi's than from Mosaic
because it's an international company and a brand that talks
a lot about humane working conditions.
Levi's says the company prides itself on doing what's right.
Its own supplier, Code of conduct says factories shall respect
the right of free association and the right to organize
and bargain collectively without unlawful interference.
This is one of the most brazen,
outrageous violations of the right of workers to join unions
to strike
that we've seen anywhere in the global apparel supply chain
in years.
Scott Nova, the executive director of the independent labor monitoring
group the Worker Rights Consortium,
helped write a new report that criticizes Levi's for failing
to do more.
This is a group of hundreds of low wage workers
in Turkey who risked everything
to try to improve conditions at their abusive factories,
believing that Levi's would protect them because Levi's purports to
protect the rights of workers and instead Levi's abandoned the
workers in violation of its own standards.
Nova's group shared emails with CNN.
The termination of workers Levi's wrote to the union is
a 0 tolerance violation of our supplier code of conduct.
We've called on Ozak to reinstate the workers.
If they do not agree to comply,
we will be forced to take the appropriate next steps
to uphold workers rights.
But Ozak text deal did not do what Levi's was
asking.
It did not reinstate all of those workers.
The company whose office is here in Istanbul behind me,
said that it did offer most of them the chance
to return,
but not to stay on strike.
Very few ultimately took them up on that offer.
Now, Turkish law does enshrine the right to strike,
But Ozak points out that under that same law,
the union didn't technically have enough members to legally walk
off the job.
A court later agreed the strike was illegal.
Ozak denies it broke Levi's code of conduct.
But Levi's disagreed Ozak did not live up to expectations,
the company wrote to the monitoring group.
But we are less clear that exiting Ozak and potentially
putting an additional 400 people out of work in the
process is how we should proceed.
The message Levi's is sending to all of its suppliers
globally,
of which there are many hundreds,
is that Levi's Labor Standards are meaningless.
Levi's told CNN it took issue with some parts of
the report but didn't say which.
It said it ultimately decided to continue working with Ozak
on a conditional basis that depends on
management's fulfillment of a detailed remediation plan that addresses freedom
of association,
working hours, and health and safety.
Sahar Gulal was the first worker to join the union
and the first to be fired,
the factory said. For quality control errors,
she says that Ozak updated her publicly available employment record
with false information,
effectively blacklisting her from any work.
Ozak says it's actions were justified.
We were looking for justice,
but we fell into the middle of injustice.
We were dismissed for disgraceful crimes.
That's why we can't find a job anywhere.
Funda Bakish is in the same boat.
She's now living in a crowded house with more than
ten other family members.
Seasonal farm work may now be her only job option.
How does this whole situation make you feel?
After all these rights violations,
they took away our bread,
they took away our jobs.
They didn't leave anything undone to us
just because we were demanding our rights.
But justice never prevailed. I hope it does from now
on.
Scott McLean, CNN, Istanbul.