Turkey: Sputnik lays off its unionised journalists / FIP

The Turkish offices of the Russian news agency Sputnik, in Istanbul and Ankara, have just dismissed 24 unionised journalists who had decided to strike to obtain better working conditions. The strike was declared following the failure of negotiations on a new collective labor agreement, announced on August 7 the Trade Union of Journalists of Turkey (TGS), affiliated to the International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ).

“Sputnik is firing our members instead of respecting their trade union rights and responding to their legitimate demands,” said TGS President Gökhan Durmuş. “The agency even went so far as to dismiss a union delegate, in defiance of the law. We demand the reinstatement of all the journalists unfairly dismissed”.

The strike was to begin on August 17. But the management of the Russian agency Rossiya Segodnya International News (Sputnik) decided to dismiss the strikers, under the pretext of an economic restructuring which imposed a reduction in the workforce.

Turkish law prohibits any action by an employer to pressure workers into not joining a union or taking industrial action.“It is clear that the goal of the leaders of Sputnik is to smash the legitimate demands of Turkish journalists, in a context of low salaries and limited freedom”, insists the president of TGS.