Makalenin Dili
: TR
The globalization process that develops due to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production produces distinct social problems and negatively affects labour markets, union rights, and freedoms. In this process, with the spread of flexible working relationships, the positioning of the workforce as the core and peripheral workforce has led to the fragmentation of labour. The risks and uncertainties of working life were systematically legitimized in the Postfordist mode of production. Especially after 1980, liberalization and flexible production paradigms tried to purify the Fordist industrial relations system of social rights such as collective bargaining and strikes, causing it to face serious adverse effects. Türkiye has also been negatively affected by this process due to its position as a semi-peripheral country within the global division of labour. This social reality, shaped by commodity chains and subcontracted work within the framework of reproduction relations and global division of labour, rationalizes capital accumulation. The September 12, 1980, military coup, which eliminated democratic rights, adopted free-market capitalism within the framework of the export-oriented growth model.
As a result of these conditions and the negativity in all other labour processes mentioned, the study aims to examine the effects of strike postponements on workers and unions as a reflection of the social inequalities created by the globalization process on factory regimes. The research uses the analysis of the
center-periphery school, especially Wallerstein, as a theoretical reference. The first part of the study is the transformation of labour in postfordism conditions using the core and periphery approach, and the second part is the transformation of union rights in Turkey as a semi-peripheral economy using the paradigm of Wallerstein. In this context, states aim to reduce labour costs to attract global real and speculative investments and transform objective legislative regulations into arbitrary treatments to discipline the labour process. As a reflection of the global disciplinary practices of neo-liberal political domination, strike postponements turned into strike bans in Turkey after 1980. The transformation of strike postponements into strike bans caused Turkey to be seriously criticized by the ILO. With the transition to the Presidential system in 2018, strike postponement decrees issued by the Council of Ministers began to be signed by the President.
Within the framework of this economic-political transformation process in which neo-liberalism began to manage the industrial relations system, the effects of strike postponements on workers and unions were examined in this study. The strike of workers at the Izmit Kord Steel Factory on December 13, 2022, was postponed by the Presidential Decree on the grounds of national security. After the decision, the strike lasted 18 days, notwithstanding different hegemonic pressures. Due to the negative results of the negotiations between union and employer representatives before the strike, workers took actions such as a slowdown strike and stopping production. In terms of this strike practice, interviews were conducted with workers and union experts participating in the strike using the in-depth interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods in the field research section of the study. In this context, workers signed a similar collective bargaining agreement, an example of Turkey’s history of the union struggle. They achieved an 85% increase in their wages despite using hegemonic instruments of the employers and political power.
Considering the findings obtained from the research, it was seen that the factory management tried to punish the class discourse of the workers using hegemonic ways. At this point, practices of oppression against the working class also reproduce the discourses that encode power relations and hegemony. Another finding obtained in the research is within the context of the class phenomenon. As it is known, there is an endless monotonous rhythm of working in factory regimes. When viewed from this aspect, the working experiences of labourers have the potential to form the beginning of the dialectic of the formation of class consciousness. In that case, while capitalism commodifies work and daily life, employees’ struggle to obtain social rights is also an economic-political point of resistance to the transformation of society into commodity form.
Hegemony occurs through the organization of consent in a variable, unstable balance in the relations between the state and social classes. In this sense, capitalism always wants to produce an obedient employee in this economic-political design.
However, the most fundamental finding of the study in the striking practice examined in the research is the iconoclastic exhaustion delirium of the state father figure, who imaginably protects the workers, even though they generally have a paternalist culture. As a result, the social reality, a mixture of the social state phenomenon and the father-state figure representing the traditional paternalist authority has been deformed in the postfordist production age.
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