Up to 15,000 Turkish metal workers walked off the job on Thursday in a huge strike over wages.

Members of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions’ (Disk) Birlesik Metal-Is union voted to go on strike on January 14.

The massive strike started at 9am with marches, mobilisations and pickets.

Employees stopped work at 22 companies in the provinces of Osmaniye, Hatay, Mersin, Konya, Kocaeli, Bursa, Izmir, Bilecik and Istanbul and will be joined by staff from a further 20 firms if a conclusion is not reached.

Five of the affected companies pressed mainly white-collar employees to call for a workplace strike ballot. But all five ballots, run by the Labour Ministry, resoundingly supported the strike.

The majority of the companies are international firms based in Germany, France, US, Holland and Japan.

Global union IndustriAll is calling on them to meet the union and discuss workers’ demands in good faith.

The Turkish Metal Employers’ Federation (Mess) had attempted to impose an extended three-year collective bargaining agreement which would damage efforts to improve conditions for newer workers or those on lower wages.

The union is demanding a pay rise and an end to differential salaries for similar jobs.

Workers starting with the companies are getting minimum salaries, forming a two-tier wage structure which Birlesik Metal-Is flatly rejects.

The union has accused Mess of building a cheap labour system providing smaller wage increases to low-paid workers, who form 70 per cent of the total number of workers in the sector, and higher raises to better-paid workers.

“This strike is not just that of Birlesik Metal-Is, this is a strike belonging to all of Disk and the Turkish working class,” said Disk chairman Kani Beko.