Turkish workers to start general strike

Around two million union members employed in various sectors, including railway, mining, public services, food and beverage, chemical, textile, and metal, and also highway workers are expected to join the strike.

TCLU president Mustafa Kumlu announced on Wednesday that they will walk out from 8am to 5pm.

The 12 factories were part of the government's Tekel tobacco and alcohol monopoly.

But in December managers told employees that they would be redeployed on temporary contracts to other parts of the public sector, with watered-down employment rights and pay cuts of up to 40 per cent.

The workers would be obliged to join civil servant's unions which do not have the right to strike or engage in collective bargaining.

Up to 12,000 Tekel workers in the Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (TCLU) responded by holding a sit-in at a central park in Ankara, demanding to be redeployed in secure jobs at similar rates of pay and with full workers' rights.

Attacks by riot police forced the workers to relocate to TCLU heaquarters, while others set up a protest camp outside the offices of the governing Justice and Development Party.

So far the government has refused to budge on the core issues, instead offering severance pay or contracts with lower wages.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted that the Tekel workers protest had been hijacked by "ideological groups and extremists" who had turned it into an "anti-government campaign."

Mr Erdogan declared that the protest was illegal and indicated that he plans to send in riot police to crush the direct action at the end of the month.

Some 200 exasperated trade unionists responded to the government's intransigence by launching a three-day hunger strike.

The union confederations - the TCLU, the Hak Workers Union Confederation, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions, the Civil Servant Unions Confederation, the Public Workers Unions Confederation and the Confederation of Trade Unions of Public Employees - plan to meet on Friday to forge a road map for the immediate future.