When Capital Steals Wages, Workers Must Unite Across Borders
Over 1,000 garment workers in Tokat, Turkey are fighting for their survival, and they need our solidarity NOW.
Workers at Şık Makas/Cross Denim produce clothing for some of the world’s biggest fashion brands: Zara, H&M, Mango, Levi’s, GAP, New Look, and Bestseller. These corporations rake in billions while the workers who make their products haven’t been paid in three months, face union related retaliation, and mass dismal.
Join the International Week of Solidarity (December 13th-21st)
The Class Struggle Action Network is organizing an International Week of Solidarity action with Şık Makas Workers in collaboration with their union BİRTEK-SEN (United Textile, Weaving and Knitting Workers’ Union of Turkey) to coordinate actions across multiple countries and put maximum pressure on the brands involved and the employer, Şık Makas. Actions will be taking place December 13th-21st, 2025.
We demand that Zara, H&M, Mango, Levi’s, GAP, New Look, and Bestseller in connection with Şık Makas, the employer, meet the demands of Şık Makas workers:
- Immediately pay all back wages and severance in full; no installment plans, no delays
- Reinstate all wrongfully terminated workers with full back pay from the date of termination
- End all retaliation against workers who joined BİRTEK-SEN and recognize BİRTEK-SEN as the union chosen by workers
- Activate independent, worker centered monitoring of the Şık Makas / Cross Denim facility and related supply chain sites.
To stand in solidarity and to fight to have these demands met, take action in the following way (actions will be taking place December 13th to 21st, and will continue after that since this is an ongoing campaign of solidarity):
- Picket and protest outside Zara, H&M, Mango, Levi’s, GAP, New Look, and Bestseller stores in cities worldwide, distributing this leaflet.
- Flood corporate offices with emails and messages that Şık Makas worker’s demands be met. Details and a pre-written email template here.
- Bring the struggle of Şık Makas workers to your union, cementing support for this campaign and these workers through union member participation in these listed actions. If you are a part of a non-union workplace, share this campaign with your co-workers, urging their support around this campaign and organizing to participate in the listed actions. If you’re a worker in the supply and retail chain with the listed brands, organize workplace actions where workers can stand in solidarity.
- Donate to the workers hardship fund by making a contribution to the Class Struggle Action Network’s strike solidarity fund. All funds labeled for “Birtek-Sen” will be donated to BİRTEK-SEN who will orchestrate the funds getting directly into the hands of workers. Donate what you can, every dollar counts. Every US dollar is worth $42.50 Turkish Lira. As workers, we must organize having the material basis from which to struggle. Donate here.
- Spread the word: Share information about the Şık Makas struggle and the week of solidarity through your union, amongst your coworkers, your social media, group chats, and any platform you have access to. The more workers who know about this struggle, the stronger our collective response. Share this link: https://class-struggle-action.net/?p=2847
If you’re taking an action listed above, please send an email to CSAN so we can further coordinate. In addition to this, send CSAN an email for support in organizing and taking any of the above actions:
class-struggle-action@proton.me
The Situation at Hand
For roughly a year Şık Makas workers were consistently paid late. When workers finally said “enough” and stopped work to demand their unpaid wages, they were met with threats and insults from the employer and from the regime union, Öz İplik-İş, that sides with management over workers.
When workers resigned from this collaborationist union and joined the combative union BİRTEK-SEN (United Textile, Weaving and Knitting Workers’ Union of Turkey), Öz İplik-İş handed over their names to the employer. What followed was predictable: mass terminations. More than a thousand workers were fired simply for exercising their right to refuse work when wages weren’t paid.
These workers were dismissed without receiving their back wages or severance pay. Their families face destitution while the brands they produced for, continue business as usual.
BİRTEK-SEN called on Zara, H&M, Mango, Levi’s, GAP, New Look, and Bestseller to take responsibility under their own codes of conduct. The brands’ response? They merely echoed the employer’s proposal: spreading payment of workers’ wages over years during a period of high inflation, a proposal that would see workers lose huge portions of their earnings to currency devaluation.
The workers rejected this insult. They are now protesting against both the employer operating the Şık Makas/Cross Denim factory and the brands’ complicity, who contract with this factory to produce their clothing. This is theft on a massive scale, enabled by a global capitalist system that prioritizes profit over human need.
To understand the situation further, review the report complied by BİRTEK-SEN.
Learn more about BİRTEK-SEN: https://www.birteksen.org/
The Need for Internationalism
This situation is not unique to Turkey but reflects the reality of millions of textile and garment workers who are paid minuscule wages, most commonly in countries like China, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. These factories operate under contracts dictated by international brands based in the United States and European countries such as the UK and Spain.
These same corporations that exploit workers in Turkey’s factories and beyond exploit workers everywhere including retail workers in the United States and Europe. We face the same enemy, and we must fight together.
The working class is connected internationally through the global capitalist supply chain from the workers in Turkey who produce the clothes to the retail workers in the United States and Europe who sell them. Thus giving the working class the power to coerce the bosses on an international level to meet our demands! Without us, the workers, there is no profit to be had. Therefore organized worker power and international solidarity can force these brands to pay what they owe!
We must seek to coordinate as workers across our unions and worker defense organizations internationally. Doing so leverages our greatest power over the capitalist class at all points along the production chain as the class that produces and sells these products and ultimately creates profit for the bosses. Such coordination exercises and builds our muscles for collective action across the working class, across unions and workplaces, and across borders.
Beyond this week of action, this campaign will be ongoing and will require continued coordination. If your union or worker organization would like to coordinate alongside others in ongoing solidarity with the Şık Makas workers and BİRTEK-SEN, please email: class-struggle-action@proton.me
The Şık Makas workers have shown tremendous courage. They’ve stood up to their employer, rejected a collaborationist union, organized independently with BİRTEK-SEN, and refused to accept crumbs when they’re owed the full loaf. Now they’re calling for international solidarity and we must answer that call.
The Şık Makas workers are showing us the way forward: reject collaboration with the boss, demand what we’re owed, and build international solidarity. Now it’s our turn to show them and the capitalist class that workers everywhere stand together.
