Research Information System
Systemic Fragilities and Counter Strategies, İstanbul, Turkey, 15 - 17 April 2022, pp.50-51
The
Perpetual Decline of the Traditional Union Movement in Turkey during the
Neoliberal Globalization
Nineties
witnessed a dramatic shift in the makeup of the Turkish industry and its
orientation. The industrial infrastructure created by the public sector after
the Great Depression and the import substituting manufacture of the sixties dominated
by the private sector, restructured from the eighties onward according to the
needs of export orientation, as a result many smaller sized firms rose
throughout Anatolia to seek their fortune by finding a niche in the ever
expanding global commodity chains of the era of neoliberal globalization. The
union movement structured during the previous era failed to adapt itself to
this changing landscape in Turkish industrial production. Both the public
sector unions and those achieve to organize in the large private sector unions
failed to organize the newly emerging centers of the Turkish industry, even
refrain from attempting to do so. This study will analyze the social dynamics
and political mechanism of this union inertia and argue that the traditional
union that were built during the era of state led industrialization and then
import substitution developed an ingrained inability to organize in the small
sized industrial firms typical for the nodes of global commodity chains
dispersed throughout Anatolia. Moreover, their earlier success in organizing also
contributed to their torpor during the previous phase of industrial relations.
Consequently, this study will also argue that this inertia paved the way for a
new type of labor militancy that engulfed these new industrial centers although
sporadically in the last five or six years.