DHL boss defends Turkish business in union row
Deutsche Post DHL chief executive Frank Appel insisted today that his company’s actions in Turkey have been in line with local employment laws, but said the company would investigate. The logistics giant has been facing months of conflict in Turkey over the dismissal of 24 workers from its Supply Chain business in Istanbul.
Unions claim the workers were sacked for attempting to unionize the DHL workforce in Turkey, but management has said the workers were dismissed for performance reasons.
Last week the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) published a paper from San Francisco State University professor John Logan suggesting that workers from DHL Logistics in Turkey had been trying to form a union for well over a year, to which management has responded with “aggressive and illegal anti-union actions”.
The paper said management claims of “poor performance” or safety violations had been simply a “pretext” for at least 21 workers to be fired to prevent unionisation.
Eight of the workers have won severance pay via Turkey’s court system.
Turkish workers have been warned that becoming unionised would hurt the company and harm their personal careers at DHL, the paper claimed, adding that workers had been prevented from talking to union officials. The paper’s findings were based on interviews with DHL Logistics staff during September.
Prof Logan said in his paper: “When implementing this aggressive anti-union campaign, DHL management has repeatedly violated the fundamental labour rights of its workers.
“Rather than make a good faith effort to remedy these violations and respect the rights of its Turkish workers, however, Deutsche Post DHL in Bonn has attempted to discredit allegations of labour rights abuses, even in the face of compelling evidence from multiple sources, and has instead clung to the now discredited justification of ‘poor performance’ as a basis for the discriminatory dismissals,” said Logan.
DHL Turkey
DHL has nearly 1,500 workers and about 1,000 subcontracted employees in its supply chain division in Turkey.
The paper issued by the ITF said Deutsche Post DHL’s response to the allegations of human rights abuses in Turkey has been firstly to deny that Turkish law had been breached, and secondly to promise to investigate the dismissals and deal with the situation in house.
Today, speaking to reporters as the company’s latest results were issued, Deutsche Post DHL chief executive Frank Appel said of three disputes with unions in Turkey that his company was “examining this intensively”.
“We think what we did was in line with the legal situation in Turkey,” he said. “If this does not turn out to be the case according to our investigation, we will take action.”
Appel insisted that the company’s code of conduct applied to its Turkish operations, and that there was a “very good environment” for workers there.
The ITF says DHL should reinstate its sacked workers in Turkey and allow workers to talk to the Turkish transport union, TUMTIS.
Along with the ITF, the union campaign in Turkey is being backed by the international UNI Global Union group and Germany’s Ver.di union, which has this month sent a six-member team to Turkey to investigate the situation there.
Members of the European Parliament are also expected in Turkey this week to look into the matter, the ITF said.
The unions have also been calling on Deutsche Post DHL to sign a global “bill of rights” setting out minimum protections and union rights for its workers around the world.
