Pressure is high on Yves Rocher to intervene and order its subsidiary, Kosan Kozmetik, to reinstate the sacked workers in Gebze. However, the only public reaction from the company has been an amateurish tweet regularly sent out by the company’s communication department. The dismissive tweet tries to claim that as the Yves Rocher subsidiary in question is producing under the Turkish brand logo Flormar there is no connection with Yves Rocher.
IndustriALL repeatedly responds calling for more mature dialogue with the company than a basic tweet.
Instead of talking with the union, the factory management has installed barbed wire around the surrounding walls to keep the dismissed workers away.
One of the dismissed workers, Barış Tekin, lies seriously ill with kidney failure, but that did not stop the Yves Rocher subsidiary sacking him. Barış started working in the plant in 2006 and was a dedicated employee, despite being diagnosed with cancer in 2010. He joined Petrol-Is with the majority of the Yves Rocher workers because he was sick of stagnating low wages. And the employer sacked him for it.
Now actions are growing in support of the sacked workers. IndustriALL affiliates have been sending solidarity messages from around the world, especially in France. The general secretary of France’s largest trade union confederation, Laurent Berger of CFDT, used his Congress speech in June to highlight the union busting of Yves Rocher. The Congress was held in Rennes, just a few miles away from the Yves Rocher headquarters.
There is huge community and union support for the sacked Yves Rocher workers. Every day there are numerous actions and manifestations in front of the factory and Flormar stores, calling for the sacked workers to get their jobs back. The workers’ slogan is
No Flormar, it is Resistance that is Beautiful!
All of the workers still in their job who have shown support for the dismissed colleagues are now being sent on compulsory leave.
French media has covered the campaign for a return to work for the sacked union members. IndustriALL has called officially requested the intervention of the French Ministry of Labour to intervene with Yves Rocher in the spirit of the French Bill on the Duty of Care of Parent and Subcontracting Companies (LOI n° 2017-399 du 27 mars 2017).
Now SumOfUs, the large international campaigning group, has taken up the Yves Rocher case as a priority campaign. Thousands of supporters daily are signing the online SumOfUs petition called for Yves Rocher to stop the union busting in Turkey.
Support the workers and join the campaign!
IndustriALL Assistant General Secretary Kemal Özkan said:
We will expand this campaign until Yves Rocher does what is right and gets our sacked sisters and brothers back in their jobs. Our next escalation will be actions at the Yves Rocher buildings in Paris. Yves Rocher must behave in line with its own ethical commitments in this case. Simply reinstate the 124 dismissed people, recognize their right to join Petrol-Is, and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
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