H&M Nixes Turkish Supplier After Gun Attack on Union Leader

Jasmin Malik Chua
·4 min read

H&M Group has dropped a Turkish “sustainable” textile producer following reports that a trade union leader was injured with a firearm just before what were supposed to be negotiations over unpaid wages and benefits following the factory’s declaration of insolvency.

The Swedish retailer was already two years into a “phase-out process” for Akar Tekstil in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir for “business reasons,” a spokesperson told Sourcing Journal. “As we were informed [of] this shocking act today, we took action [to] end all our business relations with this supplier with immediate effect.”

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The Leather Weaving and Textile Workers’ Union, better known by its Turkish acronym DERITEKS, accused Onur Akar, brother of Akar Tekstil owner Hayrettin Akar, on Monday of staging an “armed attack” on president Makum Alagöz and others as they were waiting to speak to factory management at the behest of the workers it represents through a collective bargaining agreement. While Alagöz was shot in the leg, the injury isn’t life-threatening and he is currently recovering in the hospital, it said.

“We see the attack on our union president and managers at Akar Tekstil, our workplace with a collective agreement in Izmir, as an attack on the working class and all unions that are its organized power,” DERITEKS, an affiliate of IndustriALL European Trade Union and IndustriALL Global Union, wrote on X after the incident. “We will never step back.”

Akar Tekstil did not respond to a request for comment.

IndustriALL European Trade Union and IndustriALL Global Union condemned the alleged attack on Monday, saying that the “use of force and guns against workers’ representatives is criminal and totally unacceptable.”

“We would like to send a clear message to our members in Akar Textile that we stand fully behind them in their struggle,” Isabelle Barthès and Judith Kirton-Darling, acting joint secretaries of IndustriAll European Trade Union and Atle Høie, general secretary of IndustriALL Global Union, wrote in a statement. “It is their fundamental right under international law to promote the interests of workers who have chosen to stand together in a union and demand their fair share of profits and productivity.”

The Fair Labor Association, a Washington, D.C.-based multi-stakeholder group that promotes human rights at work, urged Turkish authorities to “swiftly bring the perpetrators involved in this attack to justice.”

Representatives from DERITEKS, which represents more than 4,000 workers and is Turkey’s fourth-largest textile, garment and leather union, have “actively participated” in many of its virtual board meetings, as well as engaged with its civil society organization caucus.

“FLA stands in solidarity with Mr. Alagoz, his family and DERITEKS, and wishes him a speedy recovery,” the Fair Labor Association said in a statement. “FLA supports freedom of association for workers; acts of violence against labor leaders suppress and interfere with this fundamental human right and must not be tolerated.”

Akar Tekstil, which boasts an R&D center and design center, in addition to an expansive production floor manned by thousands of people, bills itself as the region’s first and only LEED-certified textile factory. It touts “sustainability at every step,” writing on its website that it acts with the “awareness of sustainability” from human resources practices to stakeholder relations to material selection.

H&M Group aside, C&A, George by Asda, Kiabi and Mango name Akar Tekstil on their public supplier lists, though Asda said that the list is outdated and that it no longer counts the facility as a contractor. C&A and Kiabi did not return emails requesting comment while Mango declined to provide a statement. Akar Tekstil’s website also lists Inditex brands Bershka, Pull&Bear and Zara, but the Spanish conglomerate says that it has not worked with the factory in several years.

The incident is the latest in a string of violence against union representatives, sometimes with deadly results, as with the death of Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation leader Shahidul Islam in Gazipur last June. Like Alagöz, Islam was reclaiming owed wages on behalf of workers when he was beaten to death by so-called ”hired goons,” though several representatives of a rival union have since been arrested.

The same month, four Gildan San Miguel union leaders were among 13 people killed in the Honduran manufacturing city of Choloma after heavily armed men fired into a pool hall during a birthday celebration.

And in the Turkish city of Urfa, former workers of Özak Tekstil, now 80 days into what they describe as a fight over union choice, say that security forces have attacked them with water cannons, pepper spray, riot shields and batons. Birtek-Sen, their preferred union, recently moved the demonstrations to Istanbul, where they have been rallying outside stores belonging to Özak Tekstil buyers Levi Strauss & Co. and Zara.

On Wednesday, DERITEKS stood in protest outside Akar Tekstil, declaring that it will “not bow down to your bullets.”

“We will follow the process until those who carried out this treacherous armed attack on our union, in the presence of our chairman, receive the punishment they deserve,” it wrote on X. “This attack on the working class and workers’ self-organization and unions has done nothing but increase our anger.”