Hatice Güneş

Hatice Güneş was born in Turkey in 1974 or 1975 and came to London in 1992. She describes how she learned about exploitation while working at a clothing factory.

Listen to Hatice (mp3, 392kb)

Transcript

'Some factories were slightly better than others, but only, you know, if you were getting 80p for a skirt somewhere, then you might get 90p in another place, but not a huge difference…

'I remember thinking, this was when I first, I knew about exploitation and Marxism and all the rest, but the first time I had an experience was when I was making skirts and trousers. The price, the retail price for some of them was like something like 120 pounds, 80 pounds, 90 pounds, you know, really expensive clothes. And I remember thinking, "I make about 50 of these a day, but I cannot afford to buy one of these".

'That was just so, it was a big revelation for me, like I understood what Marx meant then and there was just a very concrete example that made me, you know, think for days.'