On Strong, Resolute Labor Union Leaders (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
Unions were initially created as economic supports for workers. Along the course of time, they developed with difficulties and acquired social and invariably political dimensions. Unions’ emergence in Turkey was late, while their improvement was painful. All over the world, as unions grew bigger, union activities got more professional along with acquirement of new technical possibilities, on one hand; and considerable losses in the early enthusiasm also occurred, on the other hand. Business owners sometimes associated unions with radical opposing political currents in their inappropriate fear. But the mentioned currents did try to penetrate into those establishments, where economical considerations with a view to welfare were supposed to have been the overweighing issues. Even though at times, some union leaders themselves essentially neglected the workers while solely focusing on an increase of their own might, through false unions; their wrongdoing should not be loaded on to hones...
As a country located at the outside of 'center' according to conceptualisation of Immanuel Wallerstein, the born and rising of trade unions in Turkey has been in a quite late date when compared to the 'central' countries, especially to Britain. It's understandable for every country to having its own traditions and cultural approaches toward labour relations. So there are several (may be more) industrial relations approaches (or traditions) in labour relations history. In some industrial relations systems, the raison d'etre of trade unions has been to protect and improve labour conditions and other labour issues via collective bargaining. In some traditions trade unions means more than that: to war with capitalism or to collapse it. And while in some traditions politics has been one of the most effective weapons for trade unions to protect working class, on the other hand in some systems politics has been one of the most dangerous activities of trade unions and in those systems usually political activities has been banned for the unions. Looking at the labour history in Turkey the latter tradition is a quite familiar approach. More than one century, all the acts that regulate the area for trade unions have seen the political area for unions as an unwelcome field. In that paper I intend to present all the related acts that had such a tendency and explore the main reasons under that approach. For that aim, I am going to examine the Act
When Local Class Unionism Meets International Solidarity: A Case of Union Revitalisation in Turkey
Global Labour Journal, 2018
The article concerns the recent transformation and ensuing successes of a Turkish trade union of road transport workers called Tüm Taşıma İşçileri Sendikası (TÜMTİS). In the mid-2000s, TÜMTİS was mainly organised in small-sized freight companies having around 1 500 members with collective contracts. The strategic choice of a new leadership to concentrate on a large-scale, international firm with the support of Global Unions was the turning point. The ensuing United Parcel Service campaign ended with a collective agreement for nearly 2 700 new members in 2011. The union won its second large-scale organising victory at DHL in 2014. At the time of writing, a third large-scale firm is on the verge of recognition. To scrutinise this case, I use the power resources approach in a critical way. To the approach, I add an examination of the subjectivities of union leaders by drawing on the debates about different types of unionisms, importance of the ideology and motivations. I argue that the agency behind this revitalisation can be only explained by taking both its objectivities and subjectivities into account. While the class unionism embraced by TÜMTİS leaders explains the subjective side of the story, associational power from below and its meeting with international solidarity play the key role on the objective side.
Changes in Unionism Policy in Turkey: Unionism and Politics
Turkish unionism contained the basic features of guardianship democratic structure until the 1990s, when it boomed with demand for real democracy. A democratic unionship style was adopted that was free of active political powers of the country and outside their domain, and even influencing them and carrying out a more efficient and productive struggle for rights. Beginning in 1989, the Turkish worker movement found the chance to solve its ages long problems by organizing inside real democracy. The striking features of worker movement between 1983 and 1995 were its mobility from the bottom to the top, richness in new sorts of action, and clearance of pre-1980 ideological remnants. Unionship concept went under a radical change of mind due to the signs of need for reorganization coming from worker base, coupled with anti-revolutionist culture generated by September 12. Those years passed between the unionship approach, which was the product of guardianship and working class and strengthening inclination of civilian opposition demanding for more democracy.
Workers' Attitudes and Behaviours Towards the Trade Unions: The Case of Kocaeli
2008
Since the early 1970's, while unions have been loosing its base, discussions on member-union relationships and members' attitudes and behaviours towards the unions are getting more importance. As it is agreed, the results of researches on this topic can not be definite, since many factors of each country are really diagnostic. In this sense, one of the important characteristics of Turkish trade unionism is public sector based unionism. Together with this difficulty, privatization policy at public sector diminishes the membership base of the unions during the last two decades. Therefore the future of unionism depends on keeping relationships with members alive and organizing employees at private sector primarily. In this context, the evaluation of members' attitudes towards the unions, the motives that lead up to membership and the analyzes of member-union relationships are getting importance in order to revitalise unionism. In this sense, the paper will basically depend on the research that comprises both unionized and non-unionized workers' attitudes towards the unions at metal, food, textile and petrochemical-rubber private sectors in Kocaeli province. One of the major purpose of this research is to figure out the motives and the reasons of being a member to the unions. The other purposes of this research are to discuss the collective understanding of workers, the perception of workers on necessity of being a member, the understanding of workers on union policies and the member-trade union relationships. Also this reserch will give us a chance to make a comparison with the results of another research that was done in 2004 at the same scope. So the paper might have chance to observe the changes in three years time.
Oligarchy as a Trade Union Default Setting: A Structural Re-examination of Union Democracy in Turkey
Oligarchy as a Trade Union Default Setting: A Structural Re-examination of Union Democracy in Turkey, 2017
From the earliest days of the labor movement, rank-and-file members' supposed democratic control over their trade unions has been a constant problem due to certain sociological factors that reinforce oligarchy in organizations, and the five-decade Turkish experience of free unionism has proven to be no exception to this general tendency. This article first of all discusses the basics of union democracy as a concept and clarifies the fundamental difficulties for its consolidation. Secondly, it examines the post-1982 Turkish context of unionism structurally and procedurally on the issues of centralism, union organs, delegation and workplace representation, and asserts that the union organizational structure in Turkey further reinforces oligarchical rule, preventing the emergence of opposition and leadership contention within large unions. It also discusses the current structural provisions that support or hinder union democracy in a direct manner under the Trade Unions and Collective Labor Agreements Act No. 6356 regime in comparison to the former union laws.
Scrutinizing Union Democracy: Organization and Opposition in Turkish Unions of the Post-1982 Context
Scrutinizing Union Democracy: Organization and Opposition in Turkish Unions of the Post-1982 Context, 2017
Although unionism in Turkey has lost a considerable amount of power due to globalization and other processes peculiar to the post-1982 context, union democracy remains as a vital issue for the political inclusion and participation of large masses in the society. In the study the importance of legislation and other procedural regulations in the Turkish context that shape the organizational structure of unionism are emphasized as direct determinants of democratic conduct qualities. The historical development, structure and sources of Turkish unionism, collective and individual union freedoms, union member, official and representative protections, mandatory and other union organs, delegation, representation and electoral systems and related procedures are thoroughly examined for the evaluation of all external (constitutional and legal) and internal (union statutory and lesser regulatory) rules to comprehensively present the union democracy climate in Turkey. Tensions arising from principles of union security/discipline and individual/minority rights are identified in relation with each aspect of these formal organizational features. The results of central presidential elections are analysed in order to determine the state of opposition in each organization, and are then evaluated together with the formal rules of each organization. The study partially establishes a correlation between these two sets of variables, asserting that the lack of organized opposition in Turkish unions stems from the current general organizational structure that cannot produce autonomous centers of power within the union hierarchy unless certain changes are made by unions themselves or through the force of law.
2015
This study is an examination of the history of organized metal labor in İstanbul, Turkey after the Second World War. It analyzes and displays the complex and intermingled historical processes within which laborers in the private metal sector of İstanbul experienced workplace relations and actively responded to them. In this regard, although recent immigrants to Istanbul were exposed to unfamiliar conditions and labor relations, they attempted to shape those new relations through several means, in particular through the establishment of trade unions. In an effort to provide a comprehensive picture of class formation in the metal sector after the war, this study, therefore, focuses on the experiences of the İstanbul metal workers in their workplaces and living districts, as well as their efforts to be organized in effort to influence and change those conditions. This dissertation relies on three interrelated levels of social relations, since the majority of the metal workers gained a certain class consciousness and habit of acting collectively between 1945 and 1970 in Turkey: the metal worker's experiences in their work and social lives, their unionization and their collective actions. Of course, those conditions did not exist in a contextual void in Turkey after the war years; they were shaped by both the state policies which developed out of a certain world context, and by several social and historical problems with which Turkey grappled after 1945, as well as the particular type of progress of economic order, namely capitalism. In Turkey, the metal workers' collective responses to the prevalent conditions from which they suffered took shape in parallel with changes in the political order, the state institutions, and the balance of political ideologies. What I am suggesting in this dissertation is that the İstanbul metal worker's collective consciousness, and collective struggles which reached a peak towards end of the 1960s, were formed by the combination of different factors: the changing state intervention in regulating workplace relations after the war years, the changing patterns of social relations between bosses and workers, the progress of unionization in the sector, and most importantly, the various types of workers' collective actions that occurred as a response to all those dynamics. In the end, it was the workers' collective actions that constituted the most important reason for their rise as distinct social actors, namely; becoming members of a defined class in Turkish society. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An academic work is truly produced through the collective labor of many individuals, albeit all of them do not realize the extent of their contribution. This study is not a deviation from this cliché, thus I am grateful to many people for their assistance and patience during my work on this dissertation. I ask the forgiveness of my friends and those I have forgotten to mention by name. This text is based on archival research in many institutions in Turkey, including Türkiye Sosyal Tarih Araştırma Vakfı (The Association of Turkey's Social History Research) in İstanbul, Tarih Vakfı (The History Association) in İstanbul, the Atatürk Library and the Beyazıd State Library in İstanbul, the Adnan Ötüken Library, the National Library. and the Ankara University Library, all of them in Ankara. I salute the help and advice of their staff in locating documents. Those include; Sibel S. Sular, Fahrettin Ozan, Fahri Aral and Cem Koç. But, more than any institution, I am indebted to the Middle East Technical University Library and its great librarian, Tülin Özçelik. She did not only immediately provide any material that I asked but Tülin also manifested her friendship by allowing me to use her office, her desk, even her computer whenever I needed. Our friendly conversations and traditional backgammon competitions greatly relieved me during my impasses when writing this study. I am also thankful to
A General Evaluation of Turkey's New Act on Trede Unions and Collective Agreements
2013
Contrary to expectations, Turkey's new act on trade unions and collective agreements does not further rights and freedoms. The new law is not in harmony with ILO's convention number 87 and with international work norms and thus also not with Turkey's constitution. The new law was passed notwithstanding the negative reaction of both national and international labour organisations. The new law maintains the basic parameters and general principles of the union regulations introduced immediately after the military coup.