Miners from silver producer Eti Gümüş and coal-mining company Doruk Mining were detained in Ankara on Monday while protesting unpaid wages, severance claims and unpaid leave outside Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Ministry, the Bianet news website reported.
Both businesses are affiliated with the Yıldızlar SSS Holding. The workers, who are members of the Independent Mine Workers Union (Bağımsız Maden-İş), traveled to Ankara from Elazığ, where the Eti Gümüş operation is located, and Eskişehir, where Doruk Mining operates.
The union had announced Sunday that the workers would gather outside the ministry at 11 a.m. on Monday, accusing the ministry of failing to act despite earlier assurances that it would intervene if outstanding payments were not made by the end of June.
“July is over, and we’re in August. Miners are still not treated as human beings; their wages are not being paid,” the union said ahead of the protest.
Bağımsız Maden-İş said in a tweet shortly after the workers arrived that police had blocked them from reaching the ministry and detained members of the group.
In another statement about half an hour later, the union said workers from both Eti Gümüş and Doruk Mining remained in custody and that journalists had been removed from the area. The union described the police intervention as “torture.”
According to Bağımsız Maden-İş, workers at the Eti Gümüş operation in Elazığ’s Maden district are owed roughly eight months’ wages, while Doruk Mining workers in Eskişehir’s Mihalıççık district have been protesting for months over unpaid wages, severance pay and other employment rights. The union says around 400 current and former workers at Doruk Mining and the Yunus Emre Thermal Power Plant have reported unpaid wages, severance claims, unpaid leave or other outstanding entitlements.
The union is demanding payment of the workers’ outstanding wages and benefits, compensation for former employees and an end to what it says is involuntary unpaid leave as well as safer working conditions, job security and the reinstatement of workers it says were dismissed over union activity.
Doruk Mining workers staged a similar protest in April, marching from Mihalıççık to Ankara over unpaid wages, severance and other employment rights before launching a hunger strike. Police detained 110 miners when they sought a meeting with the energy ministry, and the protest ended later that month after the interior, energy and labor ministries intervened and an agreement was reached with the employer.
During the dispute Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar sharply criticized Doruk Mining, saying the company had made not paying its workers “a habit.” He also warned after the April agreement that the government could refuse to issue the company further mining licenses if the problems continued.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
