Page 261 - KAZOVA - ENGLISH

to go somewhere else. The bosses had left them at a time when
they were not on their guard. Moreover, the pay they were given
was not enough to subsist on. Sometimes they had been working
for 90 hours at a time in the workplace. They did not go home.
They did not see their wives and children. And now they had been
abandoned.

The situation of the Kazova workers is not simply one of
workers being denied what was owed to them. Of the workers, one
who was thrown out of work was divorced because of not being
able to find new work quickly and was forced to put his three-
month old child into care. Another with a wife sick with cancer
was forced to interrupt her treatment.

Later on they found the DIH. They pressed charges in an ef-
fort to gain their rights. But what use was it to press charges after
the bosses were not there? They might win the court case but what
good would it be? The bosses were not there, they had fled.

That is why, to get back what was owed to them, alongside
pressing charges it was also necessary to start resistance. The DIH
itself produced a programme of action. It scared them. They did
not shout slogans, they did not march. But life itself is educational.

The Kazova workers also learned. They learned to resist. They
learned of their class. They learned solidarity. And now they are
both learning and teaching.

Once a week they tried to make their voices heard by reading
out a press statement in front of Kazova Textile. Since 27 February
they have been gathering in Sisli square, marching to the front of
the factory in Bomonti, reading out a press statement and then

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