News

Turkey’s Tez-Koop-Is union today welcomed the decision of the country’s Ministry of Labour to approve its union membership majority in Tesco’s Turkish Tesco Kipa subsidiary.



The union submitted the application in May 2010, after more than 3,922 of Tesco Kipa’s 7,644 employees joined the union. Under Turkish labour laws, if a union recruits 50%+1 of a company’s employees as members then it has the right to automatic recognition for collective bargaining.



During the last two months the Ministry of Labour has been verifying the details of the 3,922 employees who joined the union and has today confirmed Tez-Koop-Is’s application for majority identification.



Tez-Koop-Is President, Gürsel Dogru, said: “This is an important decision for Tesco Kipa’s employees, our membership majority has been approved by the Ministry of Labour, this means Tez-Koop-Is is the authorized union in Tesco Kipa. We now wish urgently to meet with Tesco’s senior management in Turkey to discuss how we can work in a constructive partnership, in the way that Tesco works with USDAW in the UK, to further the interests of both the company and its employees. We hope that Tesco will accept the overwhelming vote of its employees to join the union and will not appeal against the Ministry’s decision. A probable appeal is considered as an anti-union approach in Turkey. Tesco Kipa should respect the decision of the ministry and recognise the competence of our union.”



UNI and the members of the UNI Tesco Global Union Alliance have written to company management, asking the company to accept the decision issued by the ministry, to engage with Tez-Koop-Is and to enter into meaningful dialogue and collective negotiations as per Turkish law.

Tez-Koop-Is response to Ministry of Labour Tesco announcement.pdf Letter-UNI-Kipa-5July2010.pdf