Dear colleagues,

I’m writing to inform you about an alarming dispute in SCT-Filtre CO. in Mersin city. The company produces oil, fuel and air filters under the trademarks SCT-Filter and ORTURBO Filtre. It currently has 300 employees and our union was able to organize all them in the beginning process. However, soon after we started to the negotiations for collective agreement, around 100 of our members were forced by company management to leave from the Union . And 14 of them were fired by company management. Not all but only some of fired workers were reinstated later on by the management. Our union still has the majority in the factory and total workforce (300) remained unchanged today. Since we couldn’t agree on a collective agreement with the management till now, there is a probability for the union to go to strike. But the main problem is that our members are being frightened and suppressed by the management due to very high tension at the workplace. Thus, there is a risk of new dismissals in near future.

Regarding company profile, SCT Filtre is the sole distributer of the products of SCT GmbH (Germany) (www.sct-germany.de ). In the meanwhile SCT GmbH is the exclusive distributor of Belgian Wolf Oil Corporation. Mother company in Germany is very proud of the quality of its products and says that quality is being confirmed by following car companies which is to say that these car companies represent the major clients of SCT GmbH/Germany: Daimler-Chrysler, VW/Audi, MAN, Rover, Volvo, Porsche, Ford, BMW, General Motors. SCT GmbH gives the addresses of its partners in its website. Accordingly, besides other continents the company has economic activities in following countries only in Europe: Germany, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, Litvania, Moldova, Romenia, Estonya and Turkey.

SCT Filtre in Turkey (www.sct-filtre.com ) exports upward 60% of its current production largely to EU countries. The company products meet the requirements of ISO 9002. In a letter dated 8th December 2005 which was sent to our Union by Company ( signed by Mr. Y. Sudheimer), the management has used a quite threatening language by reminding that slowing down of work and willingly reducing productivity are regarded as the violation of trade union law and these kinds of behaviours can be counted as illegal strike according to the Act 2822, Article 25. In fact, this is a concealed threat which means that the company may start to fire organized workers.

Dear friends, by this letter we only aim to inform you about the situation in SCT and do not expect any reaction from you at least at that moment, since stil we are trying to get an agreement with the management. However, we consider that it is vital to keep you informed especially if new dismissals become the case.

Kind regards,

GAYE YILMAZ International Relations Birlesikmetal Is Union