The Birleşik Metal-İs trade union, present in multiple Schneider factories in Turkey, tried to organise a union branch at the Günsan Elektrik plant, part of the Schneider group.
Workers interested in unionising gathered and the union applied to the Turkish Ministry of Labour, in order to obtain the so-called Majority Certificate, which is required in order
to legally form a plant union branch.
However, when Günsan Elektrik’s management found out that employees were about to create a union, it decided to dismiss seven of the workers leading the organising efforts.
The anti-union practices did not stop there. The plant management continued to create a climate of threat and fear through one-on-one conversations with workers to investigate whether they had joined a union or not, undermining the creation of the union at plant level.