A Class-Capacity Analysis of Social-Unionism in Turkey

• In Event: 4323 - Section on Labor and Labor Movement Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Unions and Work in an International Context

Abstract

How has Turkey’s working-class movement adapted to the new conditions of capitalism? What alternative forms of struggle have emerged to address precarization under neoliberalism? By providing a bottom-up account of social-union activism based on interviews with union activists, we argue that neoliberal capitalism structurally incapacitates Turkey’s working-class organizing through a precarization process, which is strongly expressed in the flexibilization of labor and further amplified at the level of socio-geographical unevenness and cultural identities. These challenges are addressed through innovatory methods of bottom-up organizing such as white-collar forums of exchange, internet activism, the accentuation of the emotional and gendered dynamics of class struggle, solidarity actions with blue collars, and various forms of street activism. Our sample is represented by the most salient constituents of Turkey’s new generation of unionism focused on the sectors that have been thriving under neoliberalism: construction, the communication and information sector, domestic care, and tourism.

Authors

• Efe Can Gurcan, Simon Fraser University

• Berk Mete