Turkish government paves way, capitalism kills

The increase in occupational murders in Turkey under the rule of AKP government is closely related with the "growth model"
Tuesday, 12 June 2018 22:28

It is pretty clear that the main reason of occupational murders is that the capitalists skip precautions for the sake of profits and avoid to create a safe working environment. But the increase in occupational murders in Turkey under the rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP) is also closely related with the "growth model".

In the past 16 years under the AKP rule, capitalism in Turkey has grown much larger in sectors included in "hazardous occupations" than in others, where "circulation of the capital" is much faster, profits are higher, acceleration is forced, and humans are regarded cheaper than machines.

Mines have been opened to be plundered by capitalists, tough projects were left to incompetent hands in the energy sector which requires great caution and reliable background, metropolises have been filled with skyscrapers, and workers have been forced to overtime working and chronic sleep withdrawal even in sectors that are considered most innocent. Trying to manufacture more products with fewer workers at a lower cost has an inevitable consequence – occupational murders.

Though it would be insufficient to approach the issue only from the aspect of regulations on work safety, even the regulations passed under the AKP rule have been changed or postponed when it came to increasing the profits of capitalists.

The AKP government passed the Occupational Health and Safety Code in 2012. The regulations regarding occupational health and safety were included in the Labour Law earlier. Even though the AKP claimed the code passed in 2012 to be in favour of workers, the Code actually primarily protects only employers, turning work safety into a matter of trade, and regarding the interest of capitalists a priority.

The actual code passed in 2012 encompassed all workplaces; but with exceptions brought to it afterwards, some workplaces have been left out of the extent of the Code, and it is not applied in places where less than 50 people work. There are approximately 1,500,000 work places in Turkey, and only 2% of them have more than 50 people working. So the Code does not apply to nearly 98% of the workplaces in the country. In 2017, the Code was postponed to apply to all workplaces starting in 2020.

The AKP's protection for capitalists resulted in workers' lost lives. In only 16 years (since 2002, when the AKP came to power), 20,500 workers were killed in occupational murders. The government started and boosted campaigns such as "The Goal Is Zero Accidents" Campaign, but the number of occupational murders only kept increasing. The very same government tried to justify the murders by saying that some occupations had "death in their core," and normalise them afterwards by claiming that it was just "fate".

Undeclared work is another output of the approach of the government to the issue of occupational health and safety. The data of the Statistical Institute of Turkey (TÜİK) reveals that the number of the people working informally, a large part of which is comprised of Syrian refugees, is almost equal to 30-35% of those who work formally.

The Occupational Health and Safety Code does not apply to public institutions. The AKP  government postponed the inuring of the code to 2020.

The most important step taken by the AKP to turn occupational health and safety into a trade sector was the structuring of Shared Health Safety Units (OSGB’s). OSGB’s employ professionals such as occupational safety specialists and occupational physicians, and assign them as cheap labour to workplaces depending on their working hours.

Another part of the code that has been postponed was the one regarding the assignments of specialists according to the danger classes of workplaces. Workplaces in the "very hazardous" class will be able to employ B-class occupational safety specialists instead of A-class specialists until 2020, while "hazardous" workplaces will be able to hire C-class specialists instead of B-class specialists until 2019.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security tried to justify this practice with the alibi that there weren’t enough specialists. However, the ministry's reports show that there are 17,000 people with an A-class certificate, 8,000 of whom work actively; 11,400 people with a B-class certificate, among which 7,210 work actively; and 70,000 with a C-class certificate, and 15,819 of them work actively.

The AKP government’s priority is still capitalists. Right after the decision to hold the elections on June 24 this year, the government issued a notice on April 26 to stop the inspections about occupational health and safety until late June, and called back the inspectors who were already at work.

Avoiding to upset capitalists in periods of election is now a general practice for the government. In 2014, all of the "hazardous" and "very hazardous" workplaces were going to be obliged to employ occupational safety specialists; but that practice overlapped with the mayoral election in March 2014 and Faruk Çelik, then Minister of Labour and Social Security, announced that the sanctions would start the following year. A little more than one month after this announcement, 301 miners were killed in the Soma district of the city of Manisa on May 13, 2014.

But then, would it be possible to minimise the number of occupational murders? First of all, it is obvious that the answer to the question would be negative unless the exploitation of humans by other humans is prevented.

Since they came to power in 2002, the AKP has been "elasticising" the working hours, employment forms, and contracts of people, and the exploitation has increased directly proportionate to the profits of capitalists. The government’s imposing of fundamental Islamism on the people also played its part in the exploitation process, and privatisations strengthened lawlessness, causing an increase in occupational accidents and murders.

No matter how "developed" capitalism is, it will not provide the working people with a good life.

Occupational health and safety cannot be confined to workplaces only. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), for instance, the workers’ health was elaborated as a large social construct, and structured with a completely different perspective from the one today. The right and responsibility to audit belonged to unions and the public, and workers were provided with recreational areas such as sanatoriums, thermal baths, camps, and sports places.

In Turkey, all parts of the society criticise the high number of occupational murders. While all politicians claim to be "sensitive" to the issue, the prime minister can hold the workers responsible for occupational murders, the AKP pass regulations that cause the workers their lives in favour of the profits of capitalists, and "opposition" parties never cross the line of making motions.

In order to prevent occupational murders, a social order that cares about humans must be adopted and defended. In a system where humans exploit others, neither murders nor accidents can be prevented. This is why this social order must change, giving way to an equalitarian and free country where workers and labour are valued.