Turkish construction workers building a stadium in Lithuania’s second-biggest city Kaunas have started a hunger strike over unpaid wages.
The May 1 Trade Union (G1PS) said that 53 workers were on a hunger strike outside the Kaunas municipality building and intended to continue their protest until they were paid all their arrears.
The Turkish company Kayi Construction, the contractor building the city’s Darius and Girenas Stadium, owes each of its workers between 7,000 and 12,000 euros in unpaid wages, according to the trade union.
“Before Christmas, the company said it had fully settled with its employees, but none of the strikers received any money,” the trade union said in a statement.
“According to the employees, the company offered to pay only 500 euros each, but the workers demand the full amount owed to them,” it added.
Over 50 Turkish workers staged a protest rally at the Darius and Girenas Stadium construction site last week. Five workers of Kayi Construction went on hunger strike in early December 2019.
Alper Dedeoglu, a deputy project manager at Kayi Construction, described it as a temporary problem, saying workers’ wages were overdue for only slightly more than a month.
Kaunas Municipality signed the contract with the Turkish construction company for the stadium reconstruction in June 2018. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
