İbrahi̇m Gündoğdu (2015) Local Class Relations Within The Dialectics of Value and Socialisation: The Case of Kayseri̇
İbrahi̇m Gündoğdu (2015) Local Class Relations Within The Dialectics of Value and Socialisation: The Case of Kayseri̇
İbrahi̇m Gündoğdu (2015) Local Class Relations Within The Dialectics of Value and Socialisation: The Case of Kayseri̇
BY
İBRAHİM GÜNDOĞDU
FEBRUARY 2015
Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences
I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of
Master of Science/Arts / Doctor of Philosophy.
This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully
adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of
Science/Arts/Doctor of Philosophy.
Signature :
iii
ABSTRACT
Gündoğdu, İbrahim
Ph.D., Department of Political Science and Public Administration
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. H. Tarık Şengül
iv
ÖZ
Gündoğdu, İbrahim
Doktora, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü
Tez Danışmanı: Doç. Dr. H. Tarık Şengül
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This was a very long journey and I have benefited from the patience,
kidness and ongoing support of many people.
I must also express my thanks to Özlem Çelik who read the final draft of
the chapters and made important suggestions. After a long-year of disconnection,
she also did not hesitate to provide me with invaluable friendship and assistance
in the last months of the submission of the PhD.
vi
My special thanks to go to all my interviewees, the workers in particular,
in Kayseri. This Phd thesis would have not been possible without them. At this
point, I must express my deepest thanks to those who both helped me develop
contacts for some interviewees and showed invaluable friendships during the field
study in Kayseri. Hence, thanks to Eylem Sarıoğlu-Aslandoğan, Yakup
Aslandoğan, Ümit Kartal, Ezgi Aksoy and Veli Şahin.
Last but not least, I must also mention the Çer-Sa workers who fought for
an independent labour union at their workplace at a time when I was doing the
field work in Kayseri. This thesis is dedicated to those and other workers in
Kayseri seeking for better working and living conditions within collective
struggles.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
viii
3.2. The State’s Building of Labour Regime Between Protectionism and
Authoritarianism .......................................................................................................... 50
3.3. The Rise and Demise of Conciliatory Labour Regime within
Domestic Capital Accumulation Process ............................................................. 53
3.4. The State’s Repressive Labour Regime under Neoliberal Agenda ... 58
3.5. Labour Regime in the post-2001 Period: From State Repression to
Direct Market Ruling? ................................................................................................ 64
3.6. Concluding Remarks........................................................................................... 82
4. DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION IN KAYSERI .................... 85
4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 85
4.2. Local Industrial Production within Inward-Oriented Capital
Accumulation Process ................................................................................................ 87
4.2.1. First Episode: Crafts Quarter (Sanayi Çarşısı) and The
Cooperation of Craftsmen and Traders .......................................................... 88
4.2.2. Second Episode: The Shift to Mass Production via Worker
Remittances ............................................................................................................... 91
4.3. Development of Local Industry in Kayseri within Neoliberal Context
........................................................................................................................................... 100
4.3.1. The Revival of Local Industrial Production ..................................... 100
4.3.2. Changes in Local Industry since 2001 ............................................... 110
4.4. Concluding Remarks: Contradictions within Local Industry ............ 120
5. ACTUAL DYNAMICS, FORMS AND TENSIONS OF LOCAL CLASS
RELATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 124
5.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 124
5.2 The Field Research Method ............................................................................ 125
5.3 Local Labour Market and The Recruitment Process ............................. 128
5.4. Production and Workplace-Level Relations............................................ 139
5.4.1. Technical Division of Labour and Inter-Firm Relations ............. 139
5.4.2. Working Conditions and Wage-Regime............................................ 146
5.4.3. Labour Control Strategies and Workers’ Responses ................... 153
5.4.3.1 Direct Disciplinary Labour Control via Journeyman ............ 156
5.4.3.2 Paternalist Labour Control within a Religious-
Communitarian Utopia ................................................................................... 158
ix
5.4.3.3. Confining Labour Struggles into Multiple Company Bodies
................................................................................................................................. 164
5.4.3.4. Top-Down Unionisation ................................................................ 165
5.5. (Urban) Social Reproduction Process ....................................................... 174
5.5.1. Local Business Culture: “Trading Mentality” and Kayseri Model
..................................................................................................................................... 174
5.5.2. The Urban-Workplace Nexus ............................................................... 183
5.5.3. Class Culture and Class Consciousness ............................................ 197
5.6. Conclusion: The Making of Working Class in Kayseri? ....................... 226
6. LOCAL CLASS RELATIONS AT WORK: AN ANALYSIS OF A
UNIONISATION MOVEMENT WITHIN A METAL FACTORY .......................... 235
6.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 235
6.2. The Context of Unionisation: Labour Process, Forms of Socialisation,
and Class Relations ................................................................................................... 237
6.3. The Development of Unionisation Movement: Workers’ Organisation,
Collective Action and Resistance ......................................................................... 245
6.4. The Fading of Unionisation Movement and The Restructuring of
Labour Process ........................................................................................................... 253
6.5. Class Consciousness and Class Culture ..................................................... 255
6.6. Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................ 259
7. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 263
7.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 263
7.2 Local Class Relations within the Dialectics of Value and Socialisation:
The Case of Kayseri................................................................................................... 265
7.3. The Main Findings of the Thesis and Future Directions .................... 277
REFERENCES .........................................................................................................................280
APPENDICES
A: TURKISH SUMMARY………………………………………………………………………294
B: CURRICULUM VITAE ............................................................................................... 312
C: TEZ FOTOKOPİSİ İZİN FORMU ............................................................................ 313
x
LIST OF TABLES
TABLES
Table 3.1 Economic Growth Rates in Turkey Between 1999 and 2010…………71
Table 4.5 Ten Biggest Local Industrial Firms by the Amount of Export in
2000……………………………………………………………………………..103
Table 4.9 The Number of Industrial Firms by Sector in Kayseri OID Between
2000 and 2010…………………………………………………………………..114
xi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
xii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1
This coherence actually embraces a particular labour control relation largely at the
local scale.
From this theoretical perspective, this PhD thesis aims to analyse the
recent industrial development within the city of Kayseri by focussing on its class
relations and local labour control regime in particular.
This study has been motivated by two main concerns. First, this study
seeks to develop an alternative conceptualisation of local economic development
in critical theory, focussing on the contradictions of capital-labour relation that
operate both workplace-level relations and the wider processes. In particular, it
seeks to raise the question of labour in local economic development. Second, this
study sets out to introduce these substantial arguments into the analysis of the
recent industrial development in Kayseri as one of the pillars of the fundamental
changes in the economic and political structures of Turkey throughout the 2000s.
Thus, it intends to reveal the contradictions of such changes in reference to the
case of Kayseri.
2
regions. It is then underlined that workers mainly pay the price of such unequal
relations, being employed as cheap labour (Dikmen, 2000; Köse and Öncü, 1998;
2000; Öngel, 2012).
3
Wood (1991: chapter 1) calls the “bourgeois paradigm” which considers social
changes as the interplays among the bourgeoisie regardless of their relations with
other classes, labour in particular.
On the other hand, thirdly, critical analyses of local development have also
been inadequate in the consideration of labour. The globally driven ones tend to
consider labour as the victimised subject by local supplier firms. The specific
dynamics and complexities of capital-labour relation based on the cooperation vs.
conflict are then reduced to the employment of cheap labour. The locally driven
critical analyses tend to reveal such dynamics and complexities within capital-
labour relation. However, they are not considered as the permanent aspects of
class relations but rather temporal consequences of instable periods within local
economy. Thus, tensions and conflicts between capital and labour become visible
only at the times of crisis of local coherence.
4
businessmen, public institutions and workers constituting cooperative as well as
competitive local organisations of production. Third, the city is often referred to
be the homeland of so-called Anatolian bourgeoisie as well as political Islamist
movement both of which have appeared as the two important agents in the recent
changes in state-economy and state-society relations in Turkey. Fourth, the city of
Kayseri is then presented as a model for local development not just in an
economic sense but also political sense.
The strategies and design process of the research flow from an alternative
conceptualisation for the development of class relations and labour regime in
particular. This conceptualisation is framed at the most abstract level of analysis,
involving fundamental contradictions of capitalist social relations. The research
5
then requires exploring the development of these contradictions between capital
and labour in a particular time and place. Thus, it becomes neither a theoretical
study nor a pure empirical investigation but rather a theoretically informed
analysis.
6
with workers employed in local industry (for details see Chapter 5). The
interviews were made deliberately outside the workplaces where workers meet
and live, i.e. public teahouse in the city centre, firm shuttle stops and working
class neighbourhoods. This phase also involves participant observation of
unionisation movement in a metal factory coincidently happened at the time of the
fieldwork. This experience enabled the research to have a deeper understanding of
the development of capital-labour relation at the workplace level. During the
participant observation I attended workers’ meetings, resistance in front of the
factory and demonstrations. At these times, I also interviewed eleven workers
involved in the unionisation movement. The third phase of the research includes
seven semi-structured interviews with representatives of local business
associations and labour unions.
All the interviews were tape recorded unless the interviewee refused to be
recorded. The unrecorded ones generally include firm managers and
representatives of local business associations and labour unions. Nearly all of the
workers allowed me to tape record or take notes during the interview. The semi-
structured interviews used pre-designed questions including the concepts to be
covered for the each interviewee group; however, the flexibility in the method
itself let me develop new questions during the interviews according to the
responses of the interviewees. This also allowed me to turn some of the interviews
into a conversation-like chat.
7
Chapter 3 relates the development of capital accumulation process with
capital-labour relations and labour regime in particular from a historical
perspective at the national level. It aims to reveal the development of capital-
labour relation within subsequent labour regimes through the dialectics of
socialisation of production and reproduction with value processes among the state,
capital and labour in Turkey. The chapter argues that the post-2001 period
remarks a historical break in the development of class relations in Turkey as the
social reproduction of labour is largely subordinated to the rule of global market
exchange relations.
Chapter 6 aims to track the ways in which these tensions and conflicts
within local class relations develop at the most concrete level of capital-labour
relation, namely, the workplace level. In this line, the chapter analyses a radical
unionisation movement in a big-sized metal factory in local industry, revealing
8
the historical, structural and actual relations among the employer, employee and
the state within particular workplace-level relations. Chapter 6 underlines that
workers’ collective movement for an independent unionisation, though being not
successful due to various economic and political barriers against them, has
increased tensions and conflicts within local industrial relations.
9
CHAPTER 2
2.1. Introduction
10
On the other hand, parallel with changes in production models,
management techniques and business culture, considerable amount of studies
have directed towards workplace-level processes, constituting a body of work in
industrial relations literature, namely, “new regionalism” (Piore and Sabel, 1984;
Storper and Walker 1989, Scott 1998). Based on particular organisations of
assembly lines, forms of employment, division of labour as well as linkages
between firms, this work underlines ‘successful’ examples of economic
development within certain places by arguing for the importance of flexible
relations between capital and labour as well as between firms. In its most
sophisticated explanations, these workplace-level relations are seen as embedded
within a wider set of economic and political relations that regulates them in
efficient ways (Hirst and Zeitlin, 1989; Tickell and Peck, 1992). However, to the
extent that explanation is based on idealising particular cases for a coherent
economic model, there is no systematic conflicts assumed between workplace-
level relations and wider consequences of capitalist development such as
overaccumulation, capital flows, uneven development and so on (Gough, 1996).
In this line, while the continuum within capitalist development is ontologically
separated between workplace relations and the wider economic and political
context, capital-labour relation is seen rather in a technical-organisation manner as
an issue of either task flexibility or appropriate social regulation for a sustained
economic growth.
In contrast with these two opposing lines, this work attempts to consider
capital-labour relation as the essential part of capitalist development involving
both workplace-level relations and the wider processes. This attempt stems from
an fundamental argument that capitalist development is based on a competitive
system of accumulation process in which individual capitals seek to extract from
labourers at workplace more surplus value that is to be realised through market
exchanges at wider scale (Mandel, 1977 (1962); Harvey, 1982; Wood, 1995). In
other words, while capital’s need for a systematic control on labourers arises from
the essential class nature of capitalist production, both workplace- and market
exchange-level dynamics are simultaneously involved in shaping the relation
11
between capital and labour. However, these dynamics become differentiated not
just in terms of spatial levels but also with regard to forms of social relation.
While the former is about the concrete materiality of production with different
qualities, the latter implies the homogenising processes of commensuration, flows
and quantity. In this respect, thinking through such differences and commonalities
as the reflections of simultaneous movement of capital-labour relation at different
spatial scales requires what Harvey (1999:83) considers as a methodological
necessity against capitalist social reality “a serious discussion on the relations
between commonality/difference, the particularity of the one and the universalism
of the other”.
12
2.2. The Relations of Difference and Commonality within Capitalist
Development
13
the basis of market exchange relations, they are considered both secondary to
market relations and externally related. In this sense, neoclassical approach still
lies behind Keynesian-institutionalist critiques. The consequence is then to miss
the question of social constitution of those forms, thereby failing to consider
dialectics of the particular and universal (Gough, 2003:27).
14
mode of production and then starts an analysis of object from within that
abstraction (Olmann, 2003). The measure against any functionalist and/or
reductionist explanation (a sort of epistemological and/or ontological fallacy) is
the nature of contradiction(s) inherent in social objects whereby changes and
interactions within them proceed in various ways and forms (Gunn, 1989).
Marxist abstraction then proposes to move along the way(s) of such
contradiction(s) unfolding dialectically in its development towards more concrete
forms rather than what critical realist methodology assumes linear progression in
thinking from simple to complex models (Roberts, 2003:16). In this way, distinct
particularities appear as neither independent things nor, to use the critical realist
terminology, “separate totalities” but rather a moment of wider processes in which
the whole is constituted. For example, individuals or firms are formed by the
social relations into which they involve. The point is here that the whole is not
something that has to be completely known prior to the analysis but a logical
construct implying the process of its constitution through internal relations in each
of their parts. This indeed refers to a dialectical and materialist understanding of
totality that considers the whole not as a formal entity over its constituents but as
a structural interdependence among its parts (Olmann, 2003:140). Thus, although
having a common methodological ground against positivism and empirisism,
Marxist abstraction differentiates itself from critical realism in the sense of
claiming to involve simultaneously both the (abstract) structural commonalities
and (concrete) empirical differences among social objects1.
1
However, it should be added that this methodological claim led to two opposing
traditions within Marxism, namely, structuralism and historicism, each of which
privileges one aspect over the other (see Gramsci (1971) vs. Althusser and Balibar
(1970); Miliband (1968) vs. Poulantzas (1969)). To overcome such duality, there have
also been remarkable attempts within Marxist theory, developing some reformulations for
a medium-range theory based on specific concepts that are “regime of accumulation” and
“mode of regulation” referring to certain activities taking place in between those
structural and empirical ontologies (see Aglietta 1979, Jessop 1990). Yet, to the extent
that they have just focused on such activities functioning within society by downplaying
fundamental contradictions rooted within capitalist mode of production, such
reformulations fail to overcome the problem they inherited as is revealed in the coupling
the “regime of accumulation” and “mode of regulation” that cannot avoid structuralist-
functionalist consequences (Bonefeld, 1991a). Jessop’s addition of the concept of
15
However, one can argue that there is still an important sense in which
Marxist methodology is unnecessarily restrictive in its remarks about systematic
abstraction as to taking seriously enough the concrete empirical differences. For
example, systematic abstraction tends to cast light on how a distinct object reflect
the structural contradictions of capitalist relations operating at more abstract
levels of analysis but not on how it refracts them (Roberts, 2002). As a response
this problem, Gough (1991; 2003) suggests considering a dialectical and mediated
relation between concrete empirical data and systematic abstraction in which the
former is understood by mutual modifications of abstract structures through both
melding into complex combinations and developing their contradictions in time
and space. Moreover, as concrete differences are constructed out of such
abstractions, these abstractions are also improved through multiple ‘cuts’ at which
a distinct social object is considered at different levels of abstraction and spatial
scales (Harvey, 1982) as well as from different vantage points (Ollman, 2003).
Thus conceived, the abstract structures do not appear static, hierarchical and/or
engulfing over concrete differences, but always dynamic, relational and integral to
them.
strategy and hegemonic project has only provided a kind of oscillation between economic
necessity and political contingency, with still no dialectical and materialist account of
how the diversity of social objects come together and get unified in capitalist societies
(Roberts, 2001). Furthermore, these medium-range reformulations, while seeking to
move the domain of Marxist theory supposedly at the level of analysis of CMP towards
its historical and concrete forms in certain contexts, cannot resist falling into trap of
matching each aspect of social object with only one epistemological level of abstraction.
However, any social object such as certain labour management techniques or a spatial
form of capital-labour relation can be associated both with contemporary concrete forms
of capitalism and with its abstract function in capitalism as such, while even belonging to
class society in a wider sense. In this regard, Ollman argues that Marx’s own mode of
abstraction suggests operating like a microscope that can be set at different degrees of
magnification in order to capture distinct relations of the same object with multiple social
realities at the same time (2003:chapter 5).
16
level, and as particular use by the firms of its labour force at workplace-level
(Gough, 2003). There are also two other key structures that immediately exist
along the development of capital-labour relation, namely the relations of
reproduction of labour power and the (over)accumulation of capital (Gough,
1991; Ollman, 1971:22-25). These three structures are therefore essentially related
at the highest level of abstraction, constituting mutually each other. In their
development, while they meld with each other in spatially and temporarily
specific settings by taking concrete forms, the contradictory nature of those
structures also produce some tension and dilemmas at different spatial levels that
lead to various development paths for social agents to follow. For example, as
capital being in actual cooperation with labourers at production has to impose
certain level of discipline over them in order to extract surplus value (Marx, 1990:
chapter 13), the development of capital-labour relation constitutes many tensions
for both the employer and labourers about the forms of articulation of discipline
and cooperation in different contexts. Moreover, since the reproduction of labour
mainly operates outside the workplace within wider social relations, there is
always a possibility of disproportionality between the reproduction of labour
power and the demands of capital which in practice lead various social actors to
intervene the process in certain ways. Furthermore, to the extent that each firm
has capitalist impulse to expand its capital force in competition with others, the
inevitable overproduction of capacity pushes actually each firm to develop
various strategies to avoid its disruptive consequences. In these ways, thus,
contradictory dynamics of abstract structures within capitalist economic
development lead to both different structural forms in different context and the
variety of strategies and choices on the part of agents. Hence, as Gough (2003:30)
puts, “difference can be developed out of abstract structures, providing these are
understood as materially-based, relational and contradictory”.
17
starting point for the analysis of capital-labour relation. Moreover, it cannot be
comfortably found in the so-called medium-range reformulations as regulationist
theory, because its suggested coupling and co-evolution of the “regime of
accumulation” and “mode of regulation” is not able to give a non-reductionist
account of the difference-commonality dialectics within capitalist development. In
line with systematic abstraction, however, we can argue that a key starting point is
the labour process in that it is the immediate site and material medium of capital-
labour relation (Gough, 2003).
18
This means that the power of capital is intrinsically inscribed into the
organisation of labour process itself. In capitalist relation such an obscuration of
class power within labour process is possible as long as the surplus production
provides the employer with enough profit to reproduce class relation. However,
since surplus labour time is only realised through market exchanges beyond the
workplace-level process, capitalist employer is never sure if it is extracted enough,
thereby continuously attempting to increase its power on labour process. Its direct
implication is to undermine the obscuration of class power inscribed within the
organisation of labour process. Hence, labour process appears also as the
immediate site of fundamental contradiction within capitalist class power between
securing surplus value production from labourers and obscuring it (Burawoy,
1985:32-33).
19
smoothly operates without dilemma. A clear example is that when employment
relations are considered along value relations particularly to discourage any
possibility of workers’ collective entity by fostering divisions among them, the
given material form of technical nature of production with use value aspects can
require more interaction and coordination among workers. Thus, labour process is
filled with the range of possibilities from more compatible employment relations
and management strategies to new technologies and organisations in response to
this tension, producing variety of forms in capital-labour relation - again that
differences come through the development of contradictions (see 2.1).
2
This is indeed an important point where Marxist approach offers a fundamental
distinction from non-Marxist political economy and mainstream economics. In searching
for the source of surplus value at the end of the exchanges of equivalent commodities as
it is assumed in classical political economy, Marx concludes, “the money owner must be
lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose
use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value” (1990:270). To put
differently, in line with the laws of exchange, there is a specific commodity on the market
that has the capacity to produce more value than it itself has. This special commodity,
Marx puts, is “the capacity for labour, in other words labour-power” (1990:270).
20
of commodity production. For capital, there is then no difference between labour
market and commodity market, since both of them operate via the exchange of
their values, namely, the labour-time necessary for their (re) production.
3
This also proves what Burawoy argues (against Braverman) that labour process cannot
be fully monopolized, though being controlled, within certain management techniques
such as keeping workers away the conception of production (1985: 41).
21
Nevertheless, such value pressures via market exchanges for advancing
technologies and organisation of production to increase labour productivity
circumvent labourers in many ways (Marx, 1990: chapter 15). With the increasing
mechanisation of production, while there are radical changes in tasks towards
simplification along which specialised labourers are replaced with a relatively
undifferentiated workforce by producing redundancy, more skilled labour is also
needed not just to conceive this mechanization but also to use it (Tinel, 2011:192).
This also refers to a process called by Marx as the transition from formal
subsumption of labour to real subsumption4 in which labourers are continuously
forced to (re)produce themselves with certain skills and capabilities in accordance
with technological changes within labour process. In terms of capital-labour
relation, the implication is again contradictory; it both increases labourer’s
dependency on capital, and requires more social coordination of production to
produce, inter alia, compatible work force.
4
Capitalist production develops from a labour process in which the labourer is disposed
of the control on the product (considered as formal subsumption of labour) into the one
where capital completely takes fully possession of technical and material aspects: “With
the real subsumption of labour under capital a complete (and constantly repeated)
revolution takes place in the mode of production, in the productivity of the workers and
in the relations between workers and capitalists…On the one hand capitalist production
now establishes itself as a mode of production sui generis and brings into being a new
mode of material production. On the other hand, the latter itself forms the basis for the
development of capitalist relations whose adequate form, therefore, presuppose a definite
stage in the evolution of productive forces of labour” (Marx, 1990:1035).
22
labour control, even in the case of the most technological production process, is
indispensible part of capitalist class power within labour process. Furthermore,
labour market conditions such as increasing redundancy, involvements of
excessive workforce and/or available cheap labour power can always make the
absolute surplus value extraction a viable alternative from the perspective of
capital. In this regard, capital-labour relation in value extraction is formed not just
within the process of technological changes but also wider economic and political
processes in workplace, sector and locality as well as in national and global
context.
23
There is then a diverging path between the reproduction of labour power
and capitalist production as value relation. Its direct implication is the possibility
of disproportionalities within labour process such as lack of enough qualification,
inadequate workforce or noncompliant labour profile that create problems to
ensure a sustained accumulation (Gough, 1996). In response to them, both capital
and labour tend to develop various non-market complementary forms for
managing the reproduction process in accordance with their different concerns
(Gough, 2002). They are mainly bound up with, though not reducible to, the state
as the most institutionalised form of capitalist social relation outside the
workplace. Within its political form separated from the economy, as the state
primarily needs to have sustainable economic environment, the main task of the
state with regard to labour-power is to assume responsibility for the parts of its
reproduction that individual capitalists do not directly provide (de Brunhoff, 1978:
chapter 1). Despite having an external form, the state is thus immanent in capital-
labour relation by embodying necessary cohesive aspects of capitalist
development (Meszaros, 1994: 49-65) 5 . In this context, state institutions for
certain complementary functions appear as the sites of class confrontation, which
shapes not only the mode of their establishment but also their extension (de
Brunhoff, 1978:19). There are then different forms of the state management of
labour power that involve into capital-labour relation.
5
In Meszaros’s terms, because there is no totalizing unity within the capital system on
the basis of its individual and internally fractured nature, “the formation of the modern
state is an absolute requirement both for securing and for safeguarding on a permanent
basis the productive accomplishments of the system”. Therefore, “the modern state is
brought into being its specific historical modality above all in order to be able to exercise
comprehensive control over the unruly centrifugal forces emanating from the separate
productive units of capital as an antagonistically structured social reproductive system”
(1994:49-50).
24
that it comes to offend as a universal subject the essential rule of market
exchanges between private individuals (Meszaros, 1994: 65-71; Eisenschitz and
Gough, 1998:761). In this context, for example, the containment by the state of
the inadequacies of the reproduction process may be turned into a universal
recognition for the guaranteeing of maintenance; thereby undermining the essence
of class relations within capitalism namely labourers’ initial subordination to
capital (Eisenschitz and Gough, 1996). A corollary is the danger of securing
surplus production within labour process (cf. Burawoy, 1985: 32-33; see also 2.2).
On the other hand, as the state operates through the involvement of particular
sections of capital and/or workers (Gramsci 1971; Poulantzas, 1978), its actions
are primarily constructed to favour them over the others. This then constitutes
politicization of class relations that are assumed to work in ‘nature’ (Offe, 1984:
chapter 2). This time, the implication is the risk of uncovering class power
relations within capitalist economy as well as wider social and political sphere. In
short, the form, content and limits of state involvements into the reproduction of
labour are shaped within highly sensitive paths of class relations, producing new
tensions and conflicts between capital and labour engulfing even the state
institutions themselves.
25
production from the latter who is sought to be only in executing, so that the skill
and knowledge is left to the hands of management. Thus, he suggests the
separation of mental and manual labour as the foundation of capitalist social
structure. In addition, at a more concrete level, Friedman (1977; 1986)
distinguishes two different forms of managerial control within labour process:
direct control and responsible autonomy. While the labourer in the direct control
is dictated by a strict division of labour with close supervision over the detailed
production process, in the responsible autonomy the labourer is expected to work
in a self-motivating way via status endowments, co-opting trade unions or fancy
facilities.
6
It should be noted that having received some critiques, Friedman gave more emphasis
on contradictions within each managerial strategies: “Both types of managerial strategies
have serious contradictions. These limitations stem from their common aim, to maintain
and extend managerial authority over people who are essentially free and independent,
but who have alienated (sold) their labour capacity” (1986:99).
26
with the reproduction of these relations in labour process that are shaped within
political struggles between capital and labour. For Burawoy, as labour process
within capitalism can only start with, and is determined by, workers’ dependency
on the sale of their labour power, the generic character of production process is
centred around the political apparatuses of production regarding with the
reproduction of the labourer and labour power (1985:126). He argues that they are
concerned with production process in two main ways: The first is through social
insurance policy such as the practice of unemployment wage or provision of
public health services by which reproduction of labour is guaranteed at a certain
level beyond the individual exchange relations at labour market with capital. The
second refers to labour legislation concerning with, for example, trade union
recognition, grievance machinery or collective bargaining that directly frames
how the management by capital of labour power at workplace is carried out.
While the first type of state intervention shapes the degree of labourers’
dependence on the employer, the second type regulates the content of their
subordination to capital at workplace. Hence, the form and content of state
involvement into the reproduction of labour power give essential features to the
production process.
In this line, Burawoy suggests two distinct (ideal) types of what he calls
factory regimes based on different forms of relations between capitalist
production process and political regulations concerning the reproduction of
labour: despotic regimes and hegemonic regimes. While the former is shaped by
the sole economic power of market relations engulfing both production and labour
reproduction processes, the latter is built on certain political regulations to
guarantee the reproduction of labour beyond market relations. On the basis of
these ideal types, then, the actual development of capitalist production throughout
the 20th century appeared to have seen a broad shift from market despotism
exercised by paternalistic and patriarchal employers to the consensual hegemonic
regimes with certain state provisions for labour reproduction. However, Burawoy
also suggests that a third type of factory regime called hegemonic despotism has
been emerged out of the recent processes of increasing mobility of capital flows
27
which left labourers defenceless against the closure of their workplaces while
forcing state interventions to comply with the employers’ perspective if only to
secure accumulation (1985:151-2).
28
to use all differences among workers on behalf of capital7. Furthermore, when it is
used to arrive at certain generalisations such as some typologies of regime and
historical periodization, his analysis falls into the methodological trap (of “the
extended case analysis”) that fails to capture the embedded nature of workplaces
within interlocking social relations at different spaces and their consequent effects
as uneven development on each factory regimes. In short, Burawoy’s seminal
work involves remarkable theoretical and practical shortcomings in analysing
capital-labour relation.
7
Knutsen and Hansson (2010), for example, indicates that migrant workers from rural
areas are subjected to harsher working conditions than local workers in the same factory
in China as well as in Vietnam. Kelly (2002) also convincingly shows that a variety of
differences belonging to workers that ranges from social and spatial ties to customs,
norms and habits is taken seriously into labour recruitment and management strategies by
capital, leading to different configurations of capital-labour relation across geographies
that runs contrary to the assumption of a homogeneously set of factory regimes.
8
For Jonas (1996:336), it is this point that is missed in Burawoy’s work because he
examines capital-labour relation only from the perspective of capital-in-general rather
than those of particular capitals.
29
specific coordinating mechanisms of production and labour reproduction as well
as the whole range of practice, norms, behaviours and habits around them. Jonas
argues that “these mechanisms are not generated by the workings of the market
nor do they result from the tendential global processes of capitalism. Rather they
evolve historically from struggles around the local labour control needs of firms
and industries” (1996:325).
To the extent that these LLCRs are constructed in a social and spatial
context well beyond the workplace, then, the analytical frame of reference in the
analysis of capital-labour relation can no longer confined to the boundaries of the
factory nor should it be directed primarily towards global scale. Instead, Jonas
suggests thinking through the relations between production, consumption and
reproduction within local scale. However, this does not mean disregarding non-
local interventions of capital-labour relations: the territorial extent of the LLCRs
is indeed demarcated by the non-bounded spatialized relations in which the local
and wider scales of these relations continuously interact. Depending on these
interactions, there are different degrees of the LLCRs ranging from the fully
developed to the partially developed one that is largely dependent on non-local
interventions within each localised settings. Therefore, “a local labour control
regime is not static and fixed object but rather a fluid and dynamic set of social
relations and power structures which are continuously reproduced and/or
transformed by forces of domination, control, repression and resistance operating
at a variety of scales” (Jonas, 1996:328-9). In comparison with Burawoy’s
generalisation of the idea of factory regimes, then, the concept of LLCRs
promises to provide much more dynamic and nuanced analysis of capital-labour
relation across localities, emphasizing rather on historical and geographical
contingencies leading to local variations in this relation even within the so-called
hegemonic periods.
With this geographical perspective, Jonas further argues that the LLCRs
are basically involved in urban space that is more or less delimited by local labour
markets, on the grounds that the organisation of urban space creates territorial
30
divisions along the lines of income, ethnicity or gender by which labourers are
considerably constrained in certain enclaves where to meet particular employers
(1996: 329-331). In other words, urban spatial organisations are considered to
provide different contexts for those reciprocities, enabling local companies having
interest in particular labourers to exploit certain labour enclaves. For example,
while industrial districts, techno-poles or free trade zones provide companies with
clusters of particular labour power that would be otherwise impossible to come
together, residential patterns and changes in them also reinforce or undermine
those sorts of clusters within local labour markets. Therefore, urban space
embodying different places of reciprocities can appear as a strategic component of
capital-labour relation in local context. However, to the extent that urban space
turns into the places of local labour needs of particular capitals, it also contradicts
with the global nature of capitalist labour market as a free and unlimited exchange
of labour power. Thus, urban space becomes geographies of various
manifestations of this contradiction, which may also provide a variety of
opportunities for capital in situ before the decision to flow into another place.
31
In sum, Jonas (1996) brings via the concept of the LLCRs important
contributions to the analysis of capital-labour relation, especially emphasizing on
its actual extensions to local space. He mainly thinks capital-labour relation as
constructing relatively stable control regimes on the latter within urban spatial
agglomerations because of high sensitiveness of particular capitals to the concrete
context of labour exchange relation as opposed to capital-in-general which is only
interested in the abstract process of that exchange. In this line, contrary to
Burawoy’s current hegemonic despotism on the labourer, it is quite rightly argued
that capital-labour relation cannot be understood either as the pure result of the
flows of capital disarticulated from concrete time and space considerations or as
by-product of state policies designed to appeal to their abstract interests; rather,
Jonas suggests, this relation is shaped within instable, conflictual and varied ways
of the development of reciprocal interconnections within urban-local labour
markets between production and reproduction in the context of wider scale of
power relations. Thus, the analysis becomes directed to include the concrete,
particular and contingent dynamics of capital-labour relation within a local
context, aiming to compensate for the structural-functionalist generalisations of
Burawoy’s analysis as factory regimes.
However, the way in which this aim is pursued is flawed in many points
by regulationist theory though being refined on the basis of his initial emphasis on
contradiction within capitalist relation. The regulationist theory with a specific
understanding of capitalist development as embodying regulatory mechanisms on
economic dynamics and social structures leads Jonas to consider capital-labour
relation basically on three concepts: production, reproduction/consumption and
reciprocities: While production and reproduction are seen to be autonomously
operated spheres with their own dynamics (which then come into interaction),
reciprocities are considered as externally constructed mechanisms to coordinate
those two spheres. This indeed admits that reciprocities are not on an equal
conceptual level with production and reproduction. Yet, they are asserted at the
same analytical level as embodying processes of harmonization between
production and reproduction. In other words, it is suggested that the production-
32
reproduction nexus are only provided by reciprocities that are ontologically
constructed outside them. A corollary is that there is no role given to
contradictions of capital-labour relation in the development of such nexus
although they are initially emphasized. It then seems that contradictions are rather
understood as structurally given necessary forms such as those autonomous
spheres of production and reproduction or opposite modes of capital-in-general
and particular capitals that just provide external conditions to the contingent
constructions of reciprocities for a sustained capitalist development.
Methodologically, this understanding means a set of problematic counterpositions
i.e. the abstract to the concrete, the structural to the contingent or the global to the
local, rather than to move between them (see 2.1). Within these counterpositions,
because it is not possible to consider the development of inner relations, the initial
emphasis on contradiction between capital-in-general and particular capitals in
relation with labour turns into some incompatible needs within certain spatial
contexts between individual capitals and capital-in-general about the reproduction
of labour power, leaving behind the basic antagonisms between capital and
labour9. The analysis of capital-labour relation is thus transmuted into that of local
labour market reciprocities between production and reproduction, shifting away
from the starting point to the needs of particular capitals for the reproducible
patterns of accumulation in the form of the LLCRs against the impositions of
market exchange relations. Since such needs are not defined as part of
contradictions, the structural-functionalist logic is inevitably involved into the
analysis.
9
Therefore, the source of instability within capitalist development appears to be
disharmonious influences of labour market segments. Nevertheless, although these are
important, they cannot be understood outside the basic antagonism between capital and
labour (see Fine, 1999: 132-150; chapter 7).
33
(1996:335). In as much as refraining from structural-functional logic, then, the
analysis develops into voluntaristic explanation to the labour control regimes. Yet,
such an explanation doesn’t acknowledge above all why the particular capitals
actually resist involving the reproduction of the labourer into their full
responsibility if reciprocities are beneficial to them. This indeed reveals that there
must be some structural necessities that are continuously at work even within the
concrete process of labour power management. In a voluntaristic account, on the
other hand, it becomes also blurring that why labour regimes needs to be
specifically attached to the local scale as opposed to the national scale of labour
market10. Yet, again, there are indeed certain urban-local aspects such as daily-
commuting distances, labour’s degree of dependence of local capital and local
reproduction, local forms of family and gender relations that are inherently
involved into the development of capital-labour relation starting from labour
market and labour process. In other words, urban-local scale is integral to capital-
labour relation not just because it provides an immediate space for labour markets,
but because it has fundamental effects in the processes of production and
reproduction.
10
Indeed, Jonas raises the question of spatiality of labour regime by arguing that there are
differential effects of urban spatial organisations on labour control regimes. However,
since his approach is mainly shaped by Lefebvre’s general formula as the space-place
contradiction regarding with the freedom of labour, urban-local scale is rather seen as an
arena of certain size of labour agglomeration where to construct reciprocal relations
between production and reproduction.
34
discipline versus cooperation are confined to the issue of social regulations of
labour markets, the analytical frame of reference is based on urban-local scale as
the space of those regulations. The result is eventually at best to reveal the
importance of urban local agglomerations in the construction of labour regimes11,
and at worst to disregard the uncontainable nature of class contradictions that
have been shaped within labour process. All of these means that we still need to
have a theoretical framework in which the systematic abstraction of capital-labour
relation can be taken to the more concrete levels of analysis in a dialectical and
mediated manner.
In the light of the previous section, we can continue to think through what
is called as particular capital in certain places that refers to a basic unit of capital-
labour relation. It is actually composed of three main social processes: the
involvement of labourers into labour market, development of labour process and
the reproduction sphere. While each of these processes has its own distinct
dynamics, they are also internally related in numerous ways: The reproduction
11
As a notable example, Kelly (2002) convincingly develops this geographical
perspective into the argument that space is also deployed as an important dimension for
the control and containment of labour by drawing on an empirical analysis of three
rapidly industrialized localities of Southeast Asia. He reveals five distinct types of spatial
strategies of labour control that are operating in those workplaces being examined:
atomizing workers’ bodies as an autonomous unit of recognition, designing the
workplace as a container for dispute resolution, establishing industrial enclaves as de-
nationalised and de-socialised space, constructing bureaucratic and imagined national
space over any labour collectivity, and distancing home place from workplace through
recruiting migrant workers. He argues that while labour control strategies become
differentiated through different employers’ practices using the spatial relationships
between workers, their household and communities, workplaces and the state, these
strategies are configured in quite distinct ways across local geographies within a
particular scalar containment. It is in this framework, Kelly (2002:409) argues, a detailed
analysis of the LLCRs needs to cover “the nature and evolution of the state in each
context, the historical development of export oriented development in local and national
settings, the ways in which political power is exercised at the local scale, discourse of
political legitimacy and labour market practices, the relationship between local power and
national state power, cultural constructions of household relationships and gender roles,
and the agency of certain individuals”
35
sphere affects labour process in ways that the labourers’ employment capacities
are broadly shaped within the social contexts of households, neighbourhoods,
consumption and public services. On the other hand, income from wages, forms
of local employments, the skills and so on that have been shaped within labour
process directly affects various aspects of reproduction process ranging from
consumption, gender and ethnic division of labour to personal identities and ways
of life. In addition, both processes can only develop through the involvement of
labourers into labour market that is also led by wider consequences of capitalist
production. There is then a single yet differentiated social structure composed of
labour markets, labour process and the reproduction sphere that lies behind the
formation of particular capitals. Furthermore, such social structure is also
embedded in, and develops through, certain geographies: labourers move into
labour markets at a certain spatial extent, daily-commuting distances limits
workers’ links between workplace and residential area, spatial organisations of
workplace are the intrinsic part of the material aspects of labour process, land
prices set by the level of spatially associated surplus profits affects both
reproduction sphere and wages, and public services are organised on the spatial
basis of daily personal contacts and use of services. In other words, some
geographical dimensions such as place, distance and built environment are
inherently involved into capital-labour relation as to both in the extent of labour
markets, and within labour process, and the reproduction sphere.
36
establishment of infrastructures for certain types of investments. 12 Within such a
subtle socio-spatial dialectic, capital-labour relation can then be considered as
locally effective structure, fundamentally because it is primarily within local
space that labour market, labour process and important parts of reproduction
spheres are constructed (Gough, 2003:38):
12
In other words, while capital-labour relation takes specific forms in different
geographies, they are also pushed into more concrete figures by both ubiquitous class
contradiction and their spatial structures. This also proves that difference and variety are
not unique to contingent combinations of concrete distinct entities, but also come from
the necessary development of abstract class contradictions and their spatial structures.
13
Despite these interrelations, localities are differentiated in much radical studies only by
their labour power and reproduction spheres (see Castell, 1977; Urry, 1985; Cooke, 1990;
Swyngedeouw, 1992; Peck, 1996).
37
relation as a mode of production. As seen in previous sections, capital-labour
relation is basically depended on capital valorisation process in which profit rates
on capital are commensurated through competition by private individuals in
markets, resulting with capital flows into and out of the sectors, firms and
workplaces (Marx, 1990). It is then within this process that private firms with
their locally effective structures are constantly imposed to the value discipline
constituted at wider scales that abstracts from their particular labour process,
labour power and local ties. A corollary of this competitive condition is initially to
develop particular attempts by individual capitals for changing their internal
processes and class relations at the workplace level. For example, a local sector
capital may increase labour control, introduce new products, change organisation
of production, restructure firm ownership or invest in training and built
environment in an essential aim to make labour process more competitive and
profitable. In these ways, external relations of competition in market exchange
relations are transformed into a set of conflictual issues internal to the capital-
labour relation at workplace (Bryan, 1985). To the extent that such workplace
level relation is involved into local labour markets and reproduction sphere, this
process also means attempting to change its locally effective structures in certain
ways that would make a local sector capital competitive against others. In other
words, as Gough (2003:41) puts, “the dynamics of a product-industry and its
spatial form can thus be understood as a dialectic of external competition and
commensuration within the industry with the locally specific and locally effective
structures that make it up”
embraces the standard of living, the qualities and style of life, work
satisfactions, social hierarchies (authority structures in the workplace,
status systems of consumption), and a whole set of sociological and
38
psychological attitudes toward working, living, enjoying, entertaining and
the like.
14
In this chapter (of Capital volume I) called Cooperation, Marx puts, “If capitalist
direction is thus twofold in content, owing to the twofold nature of the process of
production which has to be directed –on the one hand a social labour process for the
creation of a product, and on the other hand capital’s process of valorization- in form it is
purely despotic” (1990:450). At the next page, he explains specific nature of capital-
labour relation within labour process more clearly : “Being independent of each other, the
workers are isolated. They enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with each other.
Their co-operation only begins with the labour processs, but by then they have ceased to
belong to themselves. On entering the labour process they are incorporated into capital.
As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they merely form a particular mode
of existence of capital. Hence the productive power of capital developed by the worker
socially is the productive power of capital” (1990:451).
15
While depicting historical tendency of capitalist accumulation process, Marx refers to
the socialisation as follows: “… as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their
means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its
39
cooperative form of the labour process including technical, material and
organisational aspects (or, to use Marxian economics, “use value” aspects) bring
with it socialisation of production that potentially contradicts with the private
logic of capitalist class relation that is reflected in value production based on the
separation of economics from politics. In terms of capital-labour relation, this
means confronting private-individual capitalist employer with socialised
labourers. Within this confrontation, while having to involve a co-operative and
reciprocal relationship with labourers so as to continue the extraction of surplus
value, the employer seeks to develop new (control) mechanisms, machines and
technologies for isolating those socialisation dynamics within labour process in
ways as to protect such private logic of class relation. Hence, “isolated reciprocity”
between capital and labour appears as a substantial contradictory form rooted in
the determining core of capitalist development (Roberts, 2004:477).
own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land
and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of
production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form.
That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but
the capitalist exploiting many labourers…This expropriation is accomplished by the
action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of
capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the
cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science,
the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of
production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the
entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international
character of the capitalistic regime.” (Marx, 1990:928-9) (italics are mine)
16
“The socialization of labour is taken to its most extreme extent as the total accumulated
result of the scientific and technical development of the whole of society and humanity
40
production such as difficulties in the reproduction of suitable labour power;
overproduction of capacity or competitive pressures to short-term decisions by
private firms deepens the need for organising some social relations in ways that
go beyond the market exchange relations (Gough, 1996). It is then within this
process that the tendency for socialisation within capitalist labour process is
further developed towards wider areas, with various forms of coordination among
capitalists, between capitalists and groups of workers and between workers. These
forms tend to be associated both in civil society and within the state as the
political form of capitalist social relation. This “socialisation” then relates to both
production and reproduction (Gough, 2002:408). Nevertheless, as socialisation of
production and reproduction proceeds through non-market direct forms of
organisation in contradiction with private logic of capital, it is prone to
politicization of class relations. Therefore, there are also continuous attempts by
capital and the state for isolating those social forms from the potentials of
politicization (Gough, 2002; Roberts, 2004).
On the other hand, labourers are not passive recipients of these processes.
Instead, there are various forms by labourers of resistance, demands and collective
strategies as opposed to capitalist socialisation (or “isolated reciprocity”) whose
logic is to constrain them, in and through a set of formal and/or informal social
organisations including the state, into the carrier of labour power to be consumed
within labour process in return for a wage payment referring to an equivalent of
its value in market exchange relations namely the labour-time necessary for its
(re)production like other commodities. In this respect, labourers inevitably seek to
find better ways of their reproduction beyond the market-exchange relations, for
example, through pressuring the employer for better payments and working
conditions and demanding public institutions for investing on social welfare
provisions such as housing and hospitalisation and in education for getting more
skill and being more powerful in relation to capital (Herod, 1997). These quests
41
by labourers for a better reproduction can in turn give rise to the constitution of
collective organisations against those constraining organisations over them, as
they experience similar impositions and conditions in their survival. In these ways
of class struggle, either individually or collectively, labourers eventually affect
capital’s investment and employment strategies as well as public policies in
particular lines (Selwyn, 2012:219).
42
accumulation. However, state’s responses give rise to politicisation among
capitals and between capital and labour as its direct and universal political form
inevitably come to offend the private rule of capitalist class relations based on
market exchanges. In this respect, they do not bring stable and consistent
complements to the contradictions of capital-labour relations; rather, state
responses develop those contradictions into various political forms depending on
the class struggle between capital and labour at different spatial scales.
43
effective structure that makes such relation up with the competitive and
commensurate exchanges at wider scales. In line with Marxist abstraction, this
chapter further argues that such a dialectical development can be best understood
through the concept of “socialisation of production (and reproduction)” that refers
to the direct, concrete and material aspects of social relations as opposed to
indirect, abstract and non-material value relations. The concept involves not only
the inherent cooperative forms of labour process but also wider dynamics within
capitalist development, as the private logic of capital does not produce enough
materials (use values) to the reproduction of social relations. In this respect, there
also appear various socialisation attempts beyond labour process in order to
complement the inadequacies brought along with the development of capital-
labour relation. Yet, they produce neither consistent nor stable forms within
capital-labour relation. In contrast, both their forms and aims are essentially
differentiated according to capital, labour and the state, and their logic contradicts
with the value nature of capitalist relations. Thus, they are prone to create
politicisation of class relations. It is because of this danger that capital and the
state also seek to control the potential of politicisation from socialisation attempts.
However, labourers are not passive recipient of these control strategies. Instead,
they can resist such control strategies, demand better ways of reproduction and,
even develop their own socialisation forms against value relations, for example,
labour unions. It is then through these class struggles as socialisations attempts at
different spatial levels that class relations take different social forms.
44
the next chapters, I will take into consideration this research agenda for the
analysis of the contradictory development of capitalist class relations and labour
regime in Kayseri.
45
CHAPTER 3
3.1. Introduction
Despite the weak nature of industrial development, there had been such a
remarkable number of workers’ resistance, strikes and organisations that Ottoman
state needed to take some legal measures against labour movement. In this line,
the Law on Work Stoppages (Tatili Eşgal Kanunu) was introduced in 1909 to put
strict conditions on strikes and unionisation. This Law explicitly prohibited
unionisation in foreign and public enterprises and workers movement had to
continue rather in ways to form associations and craft societies under the Law of
Associations of 1909 so as to carry on unionisation in disguise (Akkaya, 2002;
Karakışla, 1998). As a result, the state confined the development of labour
movement to these associational forms, bringing serious impediments to the
unionisation attempts conducive to collective class practice and culture.
46
social science literature of Turkey. In this context, much of the explanation is
based on a particular consideration of Ottoman-Turkish state as having
patrimonial state tradition that assumes state bureaucracy locating at the centre of
decision making in a confiscatory relation with the social classes displaced
towards the periphery (cf. Mardin, 1969; İnsel, 1996). Yet, this consideration both
(i) tends to think the relations of state and society as the two different things
opposing to each other, and (ii) disregards the class aspects of state policies
imposed by such state bureaucracy (Yalman, 2002). Some scholars explain this
authoritarian state formation with the concept of corporatism as a dominant
ideological form of Ottoman-Turkish society (Parla, 2005). However, although
the perception of a “unified people without conflicting interest” has always been a
basic ideological motto lying behind the attempts in Ottoman-Turkish
modernisation process, this commitment is never taken to form any corporational
social organisation among classes on the basis of their occupational positions.
This is strongly clear when labourers are considered. As Makal (1999) underlines,
those state practices introduced in the early Republican period that were
seemingly close to corporatist organisations did not allow workers to form
collective organisations based on their occupational positions. Thus, the term of
corporation would also become inadequate to explain state-society/class relations
in Ottoman-Turkish context.
47
development, such a paternalist formation of the state also achieved benevolent
characteristics (Boratav and Özuğurlu, 2006:158).
Keeping labour movement and unions under the control of the state and
away from class conflict, politics, and other social movements is one of
the most important features of traditional social policy in Turkey. Turkish
social policy has incessantly aimed to delay the collective actions of
workers, to keep them under control, and to isolate the workers’
movement from other organizations. When this is impossible; however, it
chose to add labour movement and union to its historical block.
48
state. In contrast, class relations and the role of the state are not solely shaped by
the ideological orientations of the ruling elites in state power; nor can they be
simply considered without such contradictory social forms. Rather, class relations
and the state formation appear as the consequent reflections of the actual struggles
within the economic and political forms of contradictions of capital accumulation
at a particular time and context (cf. Clarke, 1991; Bonefeld, 1991b). Drawing on
theoretical arguments regarding with the fundamental contradictions of capital-
labour relation in Chapter 2, I argue that a more robust explanation for the
development of state-society/class relations in Turkey is initially required to
involve such economic and political forms that have been continuously (re)shaped
within the dialectics of socialisation and value relations in the course of capital
accumulation process.
In this framework, this chapter is divided into four main sections each of
which deals with the analysis of different phases of capital accumulation process
in Turkey in an attempt to reveal fundamental class contradictions complemented
within a particular labour regime. The first section focuses on the earlier phase of
capital accumulation process in which the state directly initiated itself to the
development of basic capitalist social forms such as labour and capital. The notion
of paternalism is then applied to reveal the role of the state in class relations. The
second section analyses the post-war period referring to a new phase of capitalist
accumulation process in Turkey based on import-substituted industrialisation
within domestic market relations. In this section, the rise and demise of a
conciliatory class relation is underlined by emphasizing on the increasing
socialisation dynamics in the state on the basis of its central role in the
accumulation process. The third section looks at the ways in which the emergent
socialisation forms in the previous decades in favour of wider sections of society
underwent repressive state policies as domestic accumulation patterns were
shifted to export-led growth strategies along with a neoliberal market therapy.
While pointing out the constitution of a legal framework for a repressive labour
regime, this section also indicates that the development of socialisation attempts
against the destructive consequences of market relations gave rise to a new phase
49
in the capital accumulation process since 1980 as those attempts were satisfied
with the inflows of money capital. The fourth section brings the attention to the
2001 economic crisis, giving a special emphasize on the new economic
programme (“Transition to a Strong Economy”) that seeks to eliminate long
decades of socialisation forms while at the same time attempting to shift the
accumulation base to productive investments. In this respect, the post-2001 period
is regarded as a historical departure in class relations towards direct market-ruling
process. Considering this departure within the context of the rise of productive
investments, this section is then specifically aimed to reveal the emerging labour
regime in its contradictory class nature. The last section attempts to draw some
concluding remarks by taking into account successive labour regimes throughout
the development of capital accumulation process in Turkey.
50
There was a particular social and spatial matrix in the earlier period of
Turkish Republic, involving a high degree of inequality between a limited number
of newly industrialising urban centres and large rural areas where much of its
population lived on subsistence farming with a small-scale land ownership. In
these circumstances, the transformation of state-society relations towards
capitalist forms could become possible only through a concentration of power in
certain institutional structures at the political level conducive to dominant and
centrist state formation. As a part of such transformation process, class relations
of modern Turkish Republic were formed within the paternalist rule of the state.
The world economic crisis of 1929 led to some changes in this paternalist
formation. One of them was to increase the authoritarian aspect of state
involvement into class relations at the expense of paternalist protections as the
favourable economic conditions of the 1920s disappeared. Given the lack of
adequate industrial investment, the state also had to directly launch an
industrialisation programme, labelled as etatism, based on domestic market. In
this line, while the first state investments were made in different cities of Anatolia
to produce basic consumer goods such as wheat, sugar and textile that were
previously imported from the West, the following ones were directed for the
production of strategic intermediate goods like iron, steel and cement in
accordance with a 5-year industrial plan of 1934 (Boratav, 1988). As a result,
Turkish state became a direct investor in the capital accumulation process of the
transition from commercial into productive capital (Ercan, 2002).
51
Law of 1936. In this period, while state enterprises developed certain protective
measures for the employees at individual level such as the provisions of shelter,
occupational education and health services, the Labour Law brought a set of
authoritarian policies aimed at both imposing work discipline over labourers and
preventing their collective existence. It was within this context that not just the
Labour Law of 1936 but also the Law on Associations dated in 1938 strictly
prohibited strikes, collective bargaining and class-based associations.
Following the end of Second World War and the emergence of a new
economic and political context relatively in favour of labour at the international
level, it became no longer possible to sustain such authoritarian labour regime
moving towards despotism. As a part of the political strategy of Turkish state to
engage in western capitalist countries, some authoritarian aspects of class
relations were eliminated. In this scope, the Law on Associations was amended to
allow for the constitution of associations on class basis. Yet, as this amendment
gave rise to in a short period proliferation of many independent unions as well as
the constitution of socialist parties with a close involvement in these unions, the
state developed a reactionary attack in the support of the rising Turkish
bourgeoisie that had accumulated considerable amount of capital during the war
52
conditions. First, the Martial Law dated in the December of 1946 declared both
the unions and the socialist parties as illegal associations. Thus, a possible
meeting between the growing working class mostly employed in state enterprises
and socialist parties supporting their interest could be prevented in advance.
Second, two important laws regarding with employer-employee relations, the Law
on Employers’ and Labour Unions and the Law on Labour Union Associations,
were passed in 1947. The main aim of these Laws was to keep particularly labour
unions “outside all kinds of currents and influences” and to turn them into
organisations “consonant with national character” of the regime and “acting
together with the state” (Akkaya, 2002:130). In addition, even though giving the
unions legal status on certain conditions, these Laws did bring to them neither the
right to strike nor the right of collective bargaining. Thus, unionisation attempts
were taken into powerless institutional forms in their relations with the state and
capital (Çelik, 2010:143).
3.3. The Rise and Demise of Conciliatory Labour Regime within Domestic
Capital Accumulation Process
53
appealed to the labourers. Furthermore, the 1961 Constitution recognizes social
state in detail as the rights of all citizens to education, health and work, thereby
guaranteeing them at the Constitutional level. In addition, it accepts the rights of
the workers to collective bargaining, unionisation and strike while giving
employers the right to lockout as well. In this line, a sort of conciliatory relation
between capital and labour was aimed to develop within the active role of the
state (Akkaya, 2002).
The following years after the 1961 constitution then witnessed a distinct
period with respect to capital-labour relation that would be later called as a golden
age. Thanks to the introduction of new regulations providing more suitable
conditions for labour unions to organise, unionisation exploded particularly at
public sector investments. Türk-İş, the then single trade union confederation
founded in 1952, reached in a short period to a membership around 550,000 three
fourths of which were employed in the public sector (Akkaya, 2002:133). In order
to prevent its potential threat to capitalist class relations, the confederation got
reorganised as a pragmatic economic actor focussing on wage increases in what is
called as “policy above parties” (Çelik, 2010:450-69). In this context, the state
54
and capital did not approach so reactionary to unionisation attempts to the extent
that their demands were compatible with the pattern of domestic accumulation17.
17
Yet, after a split from the ranks of Türk-İş founded DİSK in 1967 (the Revolutionary
Confederation of Labour Union), mainly organised in private enterprises, with a policy of
class and mass-based unionism, the labour movement would be seen as a threat to the
development of domestic accumulation.
55
classes sought to reap the politically protected market and politically delivered
subsidies, peasants and workers too raised their voices to get state support
particularly thanks to their electoral majority. In this line, the state was pushed to
provide them with not just subsidies or services but also employment 18. All of
them eventually resulted with the increasing conflictual demands in the state that
would gradually undermine its fundamental role in managing class relations
within a conciliatory labour regime.
18
The state came to be the employer of one-third of the working population and 36 % of
the manufacturing labour force throughout the 1960s and1970s (quoted in Düzgün,
2012:133).
19
Among these ways are not only the formal transferring of remittances as savings to the
Central Bank of Turkey but also informal money-collection by some initiators from
migrant workers for the setting up of multi-partner industrial enterprises in their
homelands in Anatolian towns which was also supported by the then Turkish coalition
government composed of center-left Republican People’s Party and Islamist National
Salvation Party in mid-1970s.
56
development of capitalist accumulation throughout the post-war years.
Furthermore, internal migrant workers in cities continued to have economic links
with their villages mainly due to the fact that there had been yet to emerge a
“great transformation” (a la Polanyi, 2001) in rural social relations since the state
could be kept still subsidising agricultural production against market pressure
(Keyder, 1987). A corollary of the workers’ links with their rural background was
the relieving of the burden of the cost of reproduction of labour power on
capitalist employers because these links brought remarkable non-market
contributions to the survival of workers.
57
population living still in rural areas and the high levels of informal employment20
in cities, the burden of such social policies was largely carried by the state
because the social security system based on the employers and employees’
contributions came to be inadequate and tax increases were considerably limited
by the electoral pressure of worker and peasants. A corollary of this situation
became a series of “financial crisis of the state” revealed in the form of substantial
need for foreign currency. As labour militancy increased and Turkish industrial
bourgeoisie responded simply by decreasing capacity utilization and investment,
such condition turned into an “organic crisis” in class relations. The Gordian knot
of class relations was again cut by the armed forces, yet this time supported only
by Turkish big bourgeoisie and international capital (Ozan, 2013).
When the top commander of military junta explicitly declared on the first
day of the coup that the primary reason behind the economic and political
instability of the country was the labour unions raising irredeemable demands, it
appeared that 12th September of 1980 would become a turning point in the
development of class relations. Before the military coup, there was actually a new
economic program issued by the state on 24th January of 1980 proposing shifting
economy from domestic accumulation to the one based on export orientation. The
main aim of such programme was to provide Turkish big bourgeoisie, who had
been stuck in the contradictions of domestic accumulation, with certain channels
to receive foreign currency for improving technological organisation of industrial
production in compatible with the competitive nature of international markets
(Ercan, 2002). Since giving a privilege to the value-determined nature of
international market relations over relatively politically-directed domestic
economic structures, this economic program was also in line with wider neoliberal
strategies developed by international capital in response to its devaluation
20
By 1965, the people with pension and health coverage consisted of only 20.2 percent of
Turkish population. This then increased to 48.9 percent and 39.4 percent in 1980,
respectively (Boratav ve Özuğurlu, 2006:175)
58
tendency as well as to the over politicised class relations across the world
economy. In this respect, the implementation of such market-based economic
program would indeed refer to attacking both existing socialisation forms and the
militancy of labour movement. With the elimination of democratic political
regime in a target against labour unions, the military coup of 1980 thus initiated
itself into a political guardianship of the attempt by Turkish bourgeoisie and
international capital for changing class relations along with neoliberal agenda
(Akkaya, 2002:136).
59
industries at international markets, major industrial activities became the
production of labour-intensive goods like textile and garment. It could make the
recovery of economic contraction of the late 1970s in the mid-1980s. However,
this economic growth was heavily based on the suppression of wages as well as
the starting of using unutilised capacity left at the previous years (Boratav, 1988).
As a matter of fact, between 1977 and 1988 wages decreased by 25 per cent and
the share of wages in the manufacturing value-added declined from 37 to 15 per
cent (Boratav and Özuğurlu, 2006:179). It was also within this period that
financial system became reorganised in favour of business groups by shifting tax
burden significantly to wage earners and consumers. Furthermore, agricultural
subsidies underwent serious erosion at this period, giving rise to a process of
elimination of small farmers from agricultural production.
60
of the amnesty law, and to the owner-occupied in particular. As a result, the big
cities of Turkey came to be much more the places of informal economic activities
and unemployment, giving rise to a new form of urban poverty with a permanent
feature (Işık ve Pınarcıoğlu, 2003). The rise of poverty in cities was partially
responded by the state through setting up a Social Assistance and Solidarity Fund
with a particular aim to “help poor and needy citizens…. in order to consolidate
social justice and provide a fairer income distribution”
By the end of 1980s, however, as the export oriented strategies did not
bring an investment boom but rather wage suppression and privatization, a new
wave of labour militancy from below as well as radical political movements
developed into a wider economic and political oppositional ground against
neoliberal policies. With the new styles and form of organisations, such
oppositional attempts could not just stop privatization policies but also reverse the
long years of decreasing wages in real terms. Another important outcome of these
attempts was the increasing number of unionised workers reaching to its highest
point that has never arrived at according to official registers (Boratav and
Özuğurlu, 2006:160). Hence, neoliberal aspects of accumulation process became
remarkably undermined at the end of 1980s.
21
The increase in the public expenditures of education and health between 1988 and 1992
is remarkable. The share of these expenditures in the total public expenditures rose from
15.3 percent to 24.3 percent. This also referred to the rise from 2.5 percent to 5 percent in
the GDP (Boratav and Özuğurlu, 2006:181).
61
the socialisation demands of the wider sections of society, they were inserted into
particular capitalist forms in which state and Turkish economy became more
directly subordinated to the circulation of money capital at wider scales. This also
meant imposing the latter over the former when a financial instability emerged not
just at national scale but also across the world level.
62
To sum up, the pattern of capital accumulation throughout the 1990s
increasingly led industrial capital to develop into a particular class relation shaped
with the short term subcontracting relations and aggressive accumulation
strategies on labour. Thus, labour became much more targeted for capital
accumulation at that time (absolute surplus value production). Given the limited
capacity of such value production, however, productive investments became less
competitive within international market, paving the way for shifting capital to
unproductive investments. This resulted with the increasing dependency of
Turkish economy on the inflow of money capital, which made it more fragile to
the financial instabilities across the world economy. As a matter of fact, a series
of subsequent economic crisis in 1994, in 1998 and 1999 took place in Turkish
economy either as a direct consequence of inevitably increasing state debts or
through the financial fluctuations at wider scales. Each economic crisis, while
hitting more severely Turkish economy, was responded with the neoliberal
policies of wage pressures, privatization, public service cuts and reduction in
agricultural subsidies22. In this context, the decreasing of unionisation rates and
the supplementation of labour pool in big cities with the new comers, and
specifically with the fully proleterianised Kurdish labourers due to the forced
migration, helped Turkish capital keep the wages at lower levels.
22
As of 2002, real wages decreased by 31 per cent in comparison with their peak point in
1993 (Boratav and Özuğurlu, 2006:182).
63
line, when a new standby agreement with IMF in 1999 declared the aim of
directing banking sector via a comprehensive banking reform towards giving
loans to the fixed capital investments rather than selling money capital to the state,
this hinted at shifting to a new capital accumulation pattern based on productive
capital (Karakaş, 2009; Oğuz, 2012). However, such a fundamental departure
from existing pattern of capital accumulation with various socialisations
embedded in the state on behalf of not just capital but also wider sections of
society required much more comprehensive changes beyond a banking sector
reform. A subsequent economic crisis in the February of 2001, which hit Turkish
economy so severely that dynamics of capital accumulation almost stopped,
would bring an opportunity to restructure class relations in a comprehensive
manner.
3.5. Labour Regime in the post-2001 Period: From State Repression to Direct
Market Ruling?
The February of 2001 crisis appeared first in the domestic banking sector
and then involved rapidly all economic activities 23 , with an extra-ordinary
situation not just in Turkish economy but also in politics. In response, a particular
economic programme called the “Transition to a Strong Economy” was
subsequently made within a great effort of different sections of Turkish
bourgeoisie in a direct collaboration with international capital. As an essential part
of this programme, a set of laws regarding with the operation and management of
various economic activities ranging from agriculture and industry to finance, was
enacted in National Assembly under the pressures by capitalist actors with a
motto called “15 laws in 15 days”. In this line, the Central Bank received an
autonomous institutional structure; privatization of state enterprises became
facilitated; public procurement law changed in ways to ease the involvement of
international capital into domestic market; state agricultural subsidies were shifted
from the support for guaranteed buying at -politically constituted- floor prices to
23
As a consequence of the crisis, the GDP decreased by 9.5 percent and the domestic
currency received devaluation by 21.2 per cent.
64
the temporarily designed direct income support programme; specific type of
institutions were set up within the state in a full entitlement to direct and manage
some important economic activities such as the production of sugar, tobacco and
alcohol. The main logic of these laws was to restructure the relations of the state
and economy into depoliticised institutional forms in compatible with the
dynamics of global capitalist economy (Ercan, 2003; Bayramoğlu, 2005;
Bedirhanoğlu and Yalman, 2009b). Through this restructuring of the state, it is
claimed, there would be no place for the using of political rents over market
relations that has been the disease of state-economy relations since the foundation
of Turkish Republic. To leave aside the liberal illusion of this claim about market
relations as being formed and operated in isolated ways without political
interventions (see Yalman, 2007), such restructuring has led to a fundamental
change in class relations. They were increasingly subjected to abstract value
relations operating at wider scales while at the same time having been lack of
existing socialisation forms within the state. In this respect, the years following
the 2001 crisis has brought not just a new phase based on productive capital in the
capital accumulation process but also a historical break in the ordering of the
processes of production and reproduction towards direct market-ruling.24
Such a break has been much reflected in the capital-labour relation within
different legal and institutional forms. One of the first legal regulations made by
the Justice and Development Party 25 in power was the individual labour law.
Although the re-regulation of the collective labour law in the military junta period
had brought considerable advantages to employers, they have also sought to
24
For a similar emphasize from the perspective of political Marxism, see (Düzgün, 2012).
25
The Justice and Development Party (JDP), which was founded in 2001 as the
transformed successor to the political Islamist movement, gained 35 percent of the votes
in the early general election of 2002, and thus formed a single party government after the
long years of coalition governments throughout the 1990s (Savran, 2014:86-93). In a
close association with the emerging capitalists called Islamic bourgeoisie, the JDP fully
adopted liberal economy and presented itself as the conservative-democrat party in an
appeal to the influential international actors as well as to the liberal intellectuals (Hoşgör,
2014:238-243).
65
change individual labour law since the 1990s since it was not seen as flexible
enough to make them competitive in market from their perspective. The Labour
Law no. 1425 came into force in 1970 with the imprints of the conciliatory labour
regime at that time, which in practice meant that workers could individually
receive some legal protections in their relations with employers. For example,
since there was no capitalist definition of work in the Law, the judiciary would
rather give its verdict on behalf of employee by considering him/her as the weaker
party in the dispute within the scope of the Obligations Act (Özdemir and
Yücesan-Özdemir, 2006:316). Although the Constitutional Court’s decisions
brought some restrictions against employees in line with the rising discourse of
the “protection of workplace” throughout the 1990s, the Labour Law remained
within its relatively social democratic origins that came to be no longer tolerated
by employers. Given the fact that, in comparison with the collective labour law,
the individual labour law has a wider area of application including informal sector
if the worker could bring the dispute before the court, employers have
increasingly demanded a new Labour Law that would provide them with so-called
flexible conditions against employees.
The new Labour Act of Turkey no. 4857 was enacted in 2003, with
essential changes in various aspects of employee-employer relations ranging from
the obligations to the conditions of work in favour of the latter (Özdemir and
Yücesan-Özdemir, 2006) 26 . First of all, in spite of the previous one, the new
Labour Act particularly defines the concept of individual employment contract in
an explicit capitalist form by referring to the subordination of employees at
workplace, thereby no longer allowing the judiciary to consider any employment
dispute within the scope of Obligations Act in a way to protect the weaker party
(Article 8).27 Such a capitalist definition of individual employment contract -based
26
The following considerations regarding with the new Law Act of Turkey are mainly
based on this article.
27
The first sentence of article 8 defines the labour contract as a type of contract whereby
a party (employee) undertakes to perform, under subordination, a service in return for
which the other party (employer) undetakes to pay him/her a certain wage (Özdemir and
Yücesan-Özdemir, 2006:318)
66
on the notion of subordination- gives its tone to other important regulations in the
new Labour Act. For example, whereas the previous one gave the worker the right
to both terminate employment contract and claim severance pay without a prior
notice when the employer altered the conditions of employment, the new Labour
Act empowers the employer to force the worker under new conditions by just
stating in writing that the change is compulsory (Article 12). The notion of
subordination to the employer in the definition of employment contract is also
influential in the re-regulation of working hours. Under the previous system, the
number of working hours was legally distributed evenly over the working week
and the working week was officially 45 hours. In contrast, the new Labour Act
leaves to the employer’s discretion the distribution of weekly working hours until
a maximum of 11 hours a day. Furthermore, it does not consider the duration of
overtime work on the basis of the number of weekly working hours as it was
under the previous Labour Act; instead, the new Labour Act calculates the
overtime work from the number of working hours in a two-month period. It also
gives the employer the right to extend this period to four-month on the condition
that it was added to the collective contract. This means in practice both the
increasing degree of so-called flexibility in the working hours at the employer’s
discretion and two or even four months deferral of overtime work payment. The
former is further strengthened by providing the employer with the increasing
power to determine the start, break and finish times of the working day in the 24-
hour period (Article 67).
67
extraordinary regulation in the new Labour Act that relieves the employer of
his/her obligation to the worker is provided as a direct state support in recession
times. According to this, when the weekly working hours are reduced due to
economic crisis or unforeseeable circumstances, the employer can direct the
workers to the state to receive the payment of such reduced hours in a four-week
period (Article, 65).
In sum, the Labour Act of 2003 (no.4857) fundamentally shifted the form
of individual labour law from the one imprinted with a logic of mutual obligations
between employee and employer to the one based on the capitalist nature of work
as the subordination of the former to the latter. This has created a qualitative
change in the power of individual capitalists over workers within labour process,
because workers became subordinated to the capitalists not just generally through
labour market relations but also particularly within the workplace level relations.
This new form of subordination is associated with a new legal subject of the
employer who is capable of determining the conditions of work in many instances
(Özdemir and Yücesan-Özdemir, 2006:327). Given the fact that the new Labour
Act is much more concerned with the increasing of working time, it may be also
argued that such employer has developed on the basis of absolute surplus value
production strategies which seem to correspond to the formal subordination of
labourers to capital irrespective of their skills and capacities as opposed to the real
subordination in a Marxian sense. Nevertheless, as it was claimed in Chapter 1,
there is no unilinear process from absolute to relative surplus value production
strategies in the development of capitalist production; rather, the former have
always been in the employers’ agenda either as viable alternative to relative
surplus value production within the context of instable labour market conditions
or as the more effective ways of implementing it within labour process. Therefore,
departing from the fact that the main concern of the new Labour Act is the
increasing of working time, it is not safe to argue that absolute surplus value
production strategies have been the single form of the relations between capital
and labour in the post-2001 crisis period. In contrast, some other policies that aim
to restructure labour market conditions along with the dynamics of investments
68
also signalled to the development of relative surplus value strategies in capital-
labour relations at the same period.
In this line the most prominent example is the “active labour market
policies” that have been increasingly implemented since 2001 to create a flexible
labour force in adapting to the rapidly changing dynamics of capital accumulation
through so-called “life-long training programmes”. In coordination with the
employers seeking for the qualified labour force, the state has initiated various
training programmes through which to make labourers qualified enough to be
employed. Furthermore, the labourers themselves have increasingly assumed the
burden of these programmes after the completion of temporal subsidies. An
important consequence of these policies has been, inter alia, to decrease the
importance of formal education while giving privilege to the short-term training
towards the employment (Ercan and Oğuz, 2014). In this direction, the JDP
government also made a radical step by introducing a new law dubbed as “4+4+4
education model” in 2012. Leaving aside its wider political implication as the
Islamisation of education system, this education model, which divided the eight-
year primary education period into two stages and allowed for the vocational
training starting from the second stage, has paved the way for a direct connection
between education and employment, shifting completely the aim of the former to
create labour force in compatible with the requirement of employment. All in all,
this reflects a strong tendency in Turkish capitalism towards relative surplus value
production strategies.
69
of Turkish industry has geographical differentiation across the country. Defining
six regions on the basis of their development levels, the incentive package
encourages high- and medium-technology based investments in the western
provinces while supporting labour intensive investments in the less developed
regions (Resmi Gazete, 2012). In this line, the most labour intensive sectors are
encouraged to move to the poorest regions in the east and south-eastern part of the
country. Considered with respect to the surplus production strategies, this
geographical pattern generally implies that policies towards relative surplus value
extraction come into the prominence in the most developed provinces while
absolute surplus value methods are predominantly used in poorer regions.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the change in the direction of
Turkish capitalism towards productive investments did not refer to the decreasing
of non-productive activities, i.e., financialisation in economy; rather, it has
developed along with the increasing financial investments throughout since the
2001 crisis (BSB, 2012). As it is seen in the Table 3.1 below, industrial growth
has been accompanied with the high growth rates in service sector where financial
activities are concentrated. The increasing development of non-productive
investments can also be found in the employment numbers of this period which
shows that there has been more growth in non-productive sectors (commerce,
finance, bureaucracy) in comparison with productive sectors such as agriculture,
industry and mining (BSB, 2012:86-7). This spectacular economic growth on
behalf of non-productive sectors has been closely linked with a certain monetary
policy facilitating the inflows of international capital to be used in profitable
investments including industrial production while at the same time leading to the
overvalued exchange rates. As the latter makes the imports cheaper, industrial
production has then been towards importing much of the intermediate inputs. A
corollary was the extraordinary increase in imports along with the industrial
growth, which in turn gave rise to not only the increasing of balance of payment
deficits in general but also relatively lower rate of increase in employment in
particular. For example, although the average annual growth rate in industrial
production has spectacularly increased to 7.3 per cent between 2004 and 2007, the
70
annual growth in employment rates were, in a revised calculation according to the
new population projections, respectively 1.8 per cent, 1.6 per cent and 0.5 per cent
for each year in the same period (BSB, 2012: 45).
Table 3.1. Economic Growth Rates in Turkey Between 1999 and 2010 ( %)
71
been the increasing politicisation of class relations, with the tensions and conflicts
among capitals and between capital and labour (cf. Buğra and Savaşkan, 2014).
In this process it was the 2008 world economic crisis that made these
tensions and conflicts within Turkish capitalism manifested in a clear manner.
The immediate effects of the 2008 crisis as a sharp contraction in demand at the
western countries hit the industrial production severely in Turkish economy. In
2009, industrial production decreased by 8.6 per cent and the unemployment rate
increased from around 10 per cent to 14 per cent (BSB, 2012:46). The impact of
the 2008 world economic crisis on class relations in Turkey became so
staggeringly that it had considerable repercussions at the political level. A striking
sign of them came out in the local elections in March of 2009, as a result of which
the ruling party, JDP, had first, if not a defeat, a remarkable loss after its
foundation in 2001.
72
With respect to the employment conditions, the employment package did
not bring any improvements but the acceleration of ongoing trends towards
precarious and flexible forms of employment. In practice, these employment
forms have been mainly relied upon the subcontracting firms undertaking
collateral parts of labour process in the name of main employers (Çerkezoğlu and
Göztepe, 2010). While being previously seen only in few sectors dominated by
informal relations like construction, employment via subcontracting firms came to
be the main axis of class relations in Turkey. The number of registered
“subcontracted worker” triplicated between 2002 and 2007 and also increased by
50 per cent between 2007 and 2011 (Öngel, 2014:40). Furthermore, as the state
came to act like capital at the production level because of the consequences of
neoliberal financial constraints, subcontracting work contracts have also
developed rapidly in the public sector, health and education in particular28. Worse
still, the National Employment Strategy, launched by the state in 2011 for a
comprehensive change in capital-labour relation, promises to increase and
consolidate subcontracting relations in employment (Bozkurt and Yalman, 2012).
28
The subcontracted workers employed in the state services are specifically in the health
sector. In 2009 it was reported that while there were 174,857 workers employed by the
subcontracting firms in the state services, 108,000 of these workers worked in the health
sector (Öngel, 2014:41).
73
The basic capitalist motive behind the development of subcontracting
relations is to fragment the collective potentiality of workers based on the
socialisation dynamics within labour process. In this respect, the rise of
subcontracting relations in employment throughout the 2000s undermined the
unionisation attempts that have been already repressed under the legal framework
of the 1982 Constitution. What’s more, the acceleration of both privatization and
clearance of public enterprises after the 2001 crisis became detrimental to the
union organisations at these enterprises. Thus, the rate of unionisation in Turkey
appears to have the lowest level among the OECD countries: while it was 20 per
cent in 1980 and 10 per cent in 2000, unionisation rate declined to 5 per cent in
2010 (OECD, 2011). According to the recent statistics on unionisation by the
Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the number of registered workers
(excluding public officers) in Turkey is 12,287,288 of which 1,189,481 workers
are unionised. Then, the unionisation rate is officially 9.45 per cent (Resmi Gazete,
2014). However, even though reflecting more reliable data about the number of
employment and unionised workers in comparison with the previous statistics,
this official calculation remains inadequate with respect to international standards
because it does not take into consideration the number of unregistered workers
that have indeed constituted remarkable part of the employment in Turkey 29 .
Furthermore, according to international standards, unionisation rates should be
based on the actual implication of unionisation that is the number of workers that
are capable of making collective contract. In this perspective, the total number of
workers (excluding public officers) reveals nearly as 14 million while there are
approximately 750,000 unionised workers employed within the scope of
collective contract. As a result, the actual unionisation rate appears to be around 5
per cent that is indeed compatible with what OECD puts forward. Worse still,
when private sector is considered, it appears that only 400,000 workers are
29
One of the prominent aspects of labour market in Turkey has always been about the
high rates of unregistered employment. However, there has been a slight decrease from
50.1 per cent to 43.5 per cent in the rate of unregistered employment between 2004 and
2008. Yet, this has been still high. More importantly, as of 2008, the rate of unregistered
employment among wage and salary earners in the non-agricultural sectors was 24 per
cent. This rate rises to 30 per cent in private sector (BSB: 2012:53).
74
unionised within the scope of collective contract in spite of the fact that the total
number of private sector workers are nearly 13 million workers. In other words,
the unionisation rate in Turkey comes to be around 3 per cent (Çelik, 2014).
75
within the context that the actual unionisation rate declined to the level less than
five per cent. Second, the shift from the notary condition to the using of electronic
password given by the state for the union membership application does not
provide workers with a more suitable condition in the unionisation process. In
contrast, employers can more easily control and direct unionisation attempts by
collecting workers’ electronic passwords on the basis of the unequal power
relations at workplace30. What’s more, the new Labour Union Law still keeps the
Ministry of Labour and Social Security having the right to define the branch of
industrial production on which labour unions are officially organised, thereby
continuing to use, when necessary, political controlling over unionisation. In a
similar manner, as it was before, the Law also gives the Cabinet the right to
directly delay the strike for two months in the name of public order and health. As
a consequence, it appears that the legal framework brought along with the military
coup in 12th September of 1980 to restrict workers’ collective organisation did not
change but remains in a more consolidated form within a new phase of capital
accumulation process.
On the other hand, along with all these worsening conditions for workers
in the post-2001 period came a new wave of labour migration flows having with a
fully proleterianised characteristic as opposed to the previous ones (Özuğurlu,
2011). Although there has been a gradual decline of the employment in
agriculture since the 1980s, it was still around 39 per cent at the beginning of
2000, making the country one of the few peasant strongholds among the OECD
countries. However, it has fallen sharply in the post-2001 period as the state
abandoned the support purchases of agricultural products to a great extent and
initiated temporarily direct income support as a rather compensatory policy31. As
30
There have been many cases in which employers collected workers’ electronic
passwords in order to control the unionisation attempts. For further information:
http://direnemek.org/2014/12/29/isveren-e-devlet-sifresiyle-iscinin-sendika-uyeligini-
sorguluyor-isten-atiyor/
31
The amount of agricultural support decreased from the 3.2 per cent of GDP in 1999 to
the 0.45 per cent of GDP in 2009 (Günaydın, 2009).
76
a result, employment in agriculture came to be around 24 per cent, with the
dissolution of nearly 2.6 million small farmers into urban proletariats in a full
sense between 2000 and 2010 (BSB, 2012:163). They have migrated not only to
the big metropolitan cities of Turkey like İstanbul and Ankara but also to the
medium-range newly-industrialising cities of inner Anatolia such as Denizli,
Manisa, Antep and Kayseri. All in all, as Table 3.5 reveals, this process resulted
with a great transformation in the class composition in Turkey by giving rise to a
rapid growth of urban worker households from 49.6 per cent in 2002 to 61 per
cent in 2010.
77
of the perception of these detrimental consequences on class relations that Turkish
state and capital have been increasingly interested in social policy yet within a
particular reformulation. According to this reformulation, which indeed represents
a part of wider strategy called post-Washington consensus developed by
international capital in an attempt to overcome the destructive consequence of
neoliberal market-therapy policies, social policy is meant to develop certain
complementary measures to the operation of market relations. Thus, social policy
is no longer considered as a redistributive state intervention but rather as a set of
poverty reduction programme to be carried out without creating conflicts among
social classes. In this respect, such a reformulation brings with it not only market-
oriented social policy schemes but also a substantial shift in the state’s role within
the process of reproduction of class relations that is from the redistribution to the
so-called risk management (Yalman, 2011).
78
However, the support of the former is depended on the degree to which social
assistance policies compensate for the consequences of such market
egalitarianism. Thus, market-oriented policy reforms have been accompanied by
the growth in social assistance particularly at the local scale. The importance of
local scale lies in the fact that social assistance has long been organised through
particular network relations among Islamic NGOs, municipal authorities and local
capitalists as a kind of charity organisation without providing the poor with any
right-based benefit that would bring financial pressure to the state.
32
It should be added that these numbers are behind the reality because social assistance
has been still carried out informally and in a fragmented manner despite the apparent
central state policy to develop a more systematic framework.
79
on a formally universal base, this social policy also brings to the JDP government
a distinct direct control power over labourers in non-democratic and authoritarian
manners.
80
and prices. Hence, there has been almost no enclave in which labourers can
reproduce themselves in a way other than market exchange relations.
33
The Banks Association of Turkey reported that in 2009 and 2010 while 42 per cent of
the borrowers of consumer loans were people who earned less than 1000 TL, 28 per cent
of the borrowers were those whose average monthly income was between 1000 TL.
Considered with respect to the composition of borrowers by occupation, this situation
shows that wage earners constituted more than half of the consumer loan borrower in
2009 and 2010 (quoted in Karaçimen, 2014:2).
81
earlier phases of industrial revolution. In other words, social existence of labour
has been put into an oscillation between market-exchange relations and charity-
like state assistances. Worse still, the latter have been also constrained to the
degree that the labourers would not use them as an enclave in the face of market
exchange relations. Thus, the situation increasingly appears on the part of the
labourers to fight for their survival against the impositions of both market
exchange relations and the state’s restrictions as both consider them either simply
as commodity, namely abstract labour, or only as submissive recipients without
having a social and political existence.
This chapter shows that labourers have always been imposed by certain
control practices conducive to different labour regimes within the contradictory
development of class relations in the course of capital accumulation process
within Ottoman-Turkish geography. Since this process was largely formed
through the constitution of modern Turkish state within a specific type of
bourgeoisie revolution excluding active participation of the masses, labour
regimes and class relations have been effectively imprinted with the state itself
taking different forms according to the different phases of capital accumulation
process. This historical formation of the state-society relations gave rise to the
paternalist role of the state within class relations in the initial phase of
accumulation process in which the circuit of commercial capital were gradually
extended towards that of productive capital. The balance between protective
measures and authoritarian power within the state’s paternalist role changed over
time at the expense of the former as the state had to directly involve into industrial
investments due to the disappearance of favourable conditions of accumulation in
the wake of the Great Depression of 1929. However, although the latter could
move towards despotic characteristics within the extraordinary economic
conditions of the Second World War, the state continued to provide certain
protections against capitalist development on the basic condition that they were
limited to the individual level without referring to any collective rights on a class
base. This protection transformed into a fundamentally different form in the post-
82
war period particularly since the 1960s when an extensive industrialisation
process developed along with the massive growth of labourers in cities. In this
period, class relations took a conciliatory form based on the collective
organisations of capital and labour as long as the state sustained domestic
accumulation process through both direct industrial investments and financial
supports. Yet, as the state appeared as the primary base for socialisation dynamics
against the competitive impositions of value relations at wider scales, such
conciliation ended up in a short period politicising class relations, thereby making
difficult for the state to manage the increasing tensions and conflicts among social
classes. Hence came out the limits of domestic accumulation process along with
the fundamental crisis of capital-labour relation.
83
accumulation. However, as the accumulation process became directly
subordinated to the circulation of money capital at wider scales due to the
financial liberalisation, the state and economy came to be exposed much more to
the abstract value impositions of world market relations, experienced in the
subsequent crises of 1994, 1998 and 2001. This crisis-ridden development of
accumulation process came eventually to the point that existing forms of
socialisation concentrated into the state could not survive any longer under the
increasing pressures of value impositions.
84
CHAPTER 4
4.1. Introduction
85
Sümerbank, played fundamental roles in the development of manufacturing
production in Kayseri, not just because they employed many workers and
produced cheap materials for industrial activities, but mainly in that they provided
local people with qualification in their own apprenticeship schools. Another
public investment, the Boy’s Arts School (Erkek Sanat Okulu), which was opened
in 1942, also served to produce qualified labour that would later become a
remarkable force in the development of local industry (Bilgili, 2001).
86
more international characteristics to the pattern of industrial accumulation. Thus,
whereas the big-sized state enterprises in Kayseri were left into the disinvestment
process, there has been an investment boom in local industry in which local class
relations have been recomposed in new ways. The second section is then
dedicated to the analysis of this recomposition. I analyse this process in two sub-
sections referring to its essentially different moments while I also argue that the
latter namely the post-2001 crisis period has meant a distinct phase in the whole
history of local industrial development. This chapter ends with the concluding
remarks in which current tensions and conflicts in local industrial development
are underlined.
87
4.2.1. First Episode: Crafts Quarter (Sanayi Çarşısı) and The Cooperation of
Craftsmen and Traders
In the early 1950s, the Crafts Quarter was built on just beyond the city
limits to contain in the clearly organised small plots many craft workshops that
had been concentrated hazardously in city-centre. While purchasing conditions
were made favorable for craftsmen to settle in the Crafts Quarter, they were
forbidden to continue crafting any longer in city centre. According to a Dutch
economist called Leo Van Velzen, who carried out a research on industrial
activities in Kayseri in the mid-1970s as part of a wider project by Dutch Ministry
of Development Cooperation in pursuit of developing so-called “return projects”
for migrant workers in Europe, the consequence was the flourishing production
supported by fine infrastructure of the Crafts Quarter (1977:37). However, as they
moved to the then outskirts of city, this also meant a geographical separation of
the craftsmen from selling their products directly to the consumers. For example,
the coppersmiths were reported to have suffered much from the removal of
crafting from the city-centre as they had lost their direct contacts (Ayata, 1991:93-
94). The result was then increasing involvement of tradesmen as an influential
force into craft production. In a closer investigation on crafting at that time in
Kayseri, Ayata (1991) reveals that whilst the coppersmiths were rapidly subjected
to the demands of tradesmen, the blacksmiths continued to have their autonomous
production in the Crafts Quarter, since they had no deal with the wholesalers. On
the other hand, the stove-crafts begun to feel increasingly depended on local
tradesmen because they were financially unable to stock raw materials for a more
series production. Thus, both through spatial segregation and due to financial
limits, craft production in Kayseri begun in 1950s to be subordinated to the logic
of capital accumulation via tradesmen.
88
of them functioned for a more serial production as a central workshop in
coordinating others (Ayata, 1991: 136-7). Depending on the technical aspects of
each crafting, these workshops then begun to transform into different forms of
small-scale capitalist enterprises albeit being still operated under the control of a
craft master. In this process, as qualified and experienced workers in large-scale
state enterprises were increasingly needed for local industrial production, there
emerged many forms of cooperation between local tradesmen and such skilled
workers as well as among the latter to set up workshops and small manufacturing
of metal products in the Crafts Quarter (Ayata, 1991: 138-144; Velzen, 1977:
103-11)34.
This cheap labour force generally meant to these children who were sent
to industry from near villages where there were few economic activities to survive
for their joint families. A recent PhD study focusing on the extraordinary
34
It should be noted that the closing of Aircraft Factory in 1950 facilitated the shifting of
qualified labourers employed in state enterprises into local industry within associate
firms.
89
industrial performance in the last four decades of a small town called Hacılar,
which was at that time a village having with only 14 km. distance from the city,
reveals the miserable conditions of these children some of whom would become
today’s major industrialists in Kayseri (Cengiz, 2012: 123):
They were on the road in the blind of the morning everyday, working in
the dirty and unhealthy workshops, eating bad food on the newspapers in a
corner of the workplaces and taking almost nothing. They were facing
with insults and dressing-downs as ordinary attitudes everyday and they
did not have regular working hours. Expectedly, they deprived of any kind
of social rights and did not have any organizational protection mechanism.
Most of the time they were working until late night and some time
sleeping in the workplaces or same single rooms in the squatters of
Kayseri
To sum up, despite the poor conditions for industrial development such as
financial inadequacy (and thus high dependency on commercial capital), limited
number of skilled labour and geographical distance to the production places of
basic raw materials, the Crafts Quarter of Kayseri provided local enterprises with
a pool of cheap labour force within a spatial facility to develop a specific
industrial organisation based on workshops and small manufacturing units. With
the using of limited cheap labour for accumulation, these manufacturing units had
a gradual development in local (private) industry by concentrating in the
production of metal stuff such as stove, cooker or simple separators. Ayata (1991),
who studied in the late 1970s on the relations of capital accumulation and social
change in the case of metal sector in Kayseri, underlines that it was not until a
certain level of accumulation and experience was achieved in the 1960s that serial
production took place in local industry. In terms of the emergence of mass
production, such gradual development from small workplaces to relatively big
manufacturing provides a different case from the large-scale investments that
have occurred to local industry especially since the late-60s (1991: 134-5).
Because the latter was based on different social and spatial dynamics, I below
consider them within a second episode in the initial period of industrial
accumulation in Kayseri.
90
4.2.2. Second Episode: The Shift to Mass Production via Worker
Remittances
In his research, Velzen noted that whereas craft and small-scale industrial
enterprises chose to locate in Crafts Quarter as well as in the new one built in
1972, medium and big scale manufacturing as factory halls jumped towards wider
locations along motorways in and around the city of Kayseri (1977:50).
According to figures in Table 4.1, besides four state industrial enterprises, there
were thirty-two private ones with more than 10 employees in Kayseri in the
beginnings of the 1960s. However, it was only these four public enterprises that
constitute the two-thirds in terms of employment in local industry at that time,
dominating over private enterprises in every respect until the mid-1970s.
91
manufacturing rounded and square hollow pipes that are useful for table and chair
legs, some furniture workshops in Kayseri began to turn into large enterprises for
developing mass-production of tables and chairs. These enterprises were also seen
to have constituted some trade corporations among themselves on the basis of
their owners’ social networks, i.e., village backgrounds or relative ties in order to
overcome the monopolistic power of local merchants on trading raw materials.
Yet, such initiatives had not arrived at the setting up a furniture factory despite
that some attempts were revealed. For Velzen, this failure stems from the
fundamental fact in furniture sector that it was difficult to compete in terms of
both price and quality with those enterprises in Bursa-İnegöl, a town in Marmara
region in the western parts of the country where wood industry was mainly
centered. Thus, the influential power of commercial activities on local industry
continued to exist.
35
The state played an influential role in the development of these multi-partner industrial
enterprises. Beyond the state economic policy in 1970s to use Turkish migrant workers’
savings for compensating increasing deficit accounts due to import-substituted
industrialization, both parts of the CHP and MSP coalition government at that time
converged on the support of multi-partner ownership in economic enterprises as part of
92
The impacts of such developments towards mass-production in local
industry were felt much in the metal sector heavily composed of craft and small
manufacturing firms along with labour-intensive production. These developments
brought together modern technologies and products that meant unfavorable
conditions for the firms in metal sector to compete. In this scope, while the
introduction of aluminum that was to replace copper as a raw material was the
first step, the involvement of hydraulic presses into cast work instead of foundries
constituted the second one in paving the way for the development of changes in
local metal sector. The direct tangible implication of them was the shifting to a
more serial production on assembled lines of aluminum pots, pans, electric ovens
and metal stoves (Velzen, 1977: 79-83). The concentration of large private
investments into metal products as well as textile sector throughout the late 60s
and 1970s is clearly evident in the Table 4.2:
Table 4.2: Local Enterprises (with more than 5 employees) registered by Kayseri
Chamber of Industry in 1976
Total
Number of Workplace Between 25 and 100
Enterprises
Employees
Number of employees
Number of employees
Number of employees
employees
employees
employees
Activities
Food 4 1,383 2 124 13 150 19 1,657
Processing
Textiles 8 7,035 3 124 9 105 21 7,264
their wider political strategies. In this context, public institutions backed many multi-
partner industrial investments in various forms.
93
Table 4.2 (continued)
94
However, such concentration resulted with changes not only in technical
and organisational aspects of local industrial production but also in class relations.
Ayata (1991) underlines that, when it comes to the late 1970s, there was no longer
a strong tendency among qualified labourers or craft masters for stepping up to
the owner of an industrial enterprise. This did not directly refer to the dissolution
of small-scale manufacturing activities under the control of these masters since
they could still survive on the basis of some specificities of their labour processes
and even make a certain level of accumulation especially through the use of cheap
labour force (1991: 173-4). Yet, there were clear signs of proleterianisation as the
conventional apprenticeship system within small manufacturing provided no
guarantee for having a self-employment as master craftsman. Velzen states that
journeymen (kalfa) who had seen no future in small manufacturing sought to
entry in medium and large scale enterprises, thereby undergoing a certain
proleterianisation process (1977:120). They were preferred by large-scale
enterprises to the new comers of local labour market. In this way, there emerged a
particular relation on recruitment between small manufacturing and large-scale
industries corresponding to a kind of segmentation within local labour market.
Thus, while qualified workers tended to move into large industries, the newly
coming labourers from the rural sides of Kayseri were recruited into small
manufacturing (Ayata, 1991:187). The rising population of the city from 65,488
in 1950 to 281,320 in 1980 reveals the degree of the growth of local labour
market within this mobility.
95
disruptive consequences of this process. Apart from the ones in state enterprises
such as TEKSIF (The Textile, Knitting and Garment Industry Workers’ Union)
originally since 1947 in Sumerbank, local employers encountered for the first
time labour unions in the beginning of 1970s when a group of metal workers
joined İç Anadolu Metal-İş Union (Middle Anatolia Metal Workers’ Union),
affiliated with the nationally organised union confederation called Türk-İş
(Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions). It was at that time that TEKSIF also
started to organise workers of textile industry in the multi-partnership private
companies like Orta Anadolu and Birlik Mensucat.36 This vibrant economic and
political atmosphere among workers, in association with the national-level
developments, had created 31 different trade unions in Kayseri (Velzen, 1977:
127) 37 . In this line, class tensions within local industrial development has
exploded during the 1970s, with the increasing conflicts between employers and
employees provoking clashes among trade unions, especially in metal sector
(Velzen, 1977:130):
36
In a book of the Kayseri Branch of Turkish Red Crescent composed of interviews with
charitable people (mostly businessmen), Tahir Horoz, who is presented as one of these
people and has been the chairman of TEKSIF Kayseri Branch for 40 years without
interruption, tells that his trade union even went on a strike for 59 days in 1973 in Orta
Anadolu Company (Birol, 2011: 696)
37
In terms of membership as a branch to the nationally organised bonds, there were in the
1970s three different affiliations among local trade unions that were organised in textile
and metal sectors: Türk-İş, DISK (the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions) and
MISK (the Confederation of Nationalist Trade Unions). Türk-İş, which was established
after the Second World War in a manner following the blueprint of American trade
unions, had been the sole affiliation in Kayseri until 1974. DISK was involved in local
industry when the metal workers’ union separated from Türk-İş affiliation and decided in
1976 to join the Maden İş Union. On the other hand, MISK, which had been established
in 1970 as a national confederation in a reactionary manner against the workers’ political
uprising in affiliation with DISK, began to entry in local industry as the DISK-affiliated
Maden-Is Union increased its influence on labour movement.
96
driving force behind the resuscitation of Metal-Is. In this way, they hoped
to take some wind out of the sail of the more radical Maden-Is, affiliate of
DISK. It would be far simpler to conclude a labour contract of their liking
with Metal-Is which would be under their influence, indebted to them for
revival.38
38
An example of how this strategy was carried out would make clearer both the level of
politicisation within class relations and the direct brutality by employers against workers
at the end of 1970s in Kayseri: “For a union to prove that in a certain enterprise the union
has a specific number of members, membership must be confirmed officially by a notary
and signed. Evenings, however, notaries’ offices are closed, which posed the unions the
problem of securing valid proofs of membership in a short time. Maden-Is organised a
small action in response to the problem: during work hours, a hundred or so workers left
the factory premises to have their membership in Maden-Is officially confirmed. The
entrepreneur seized upon this action as sufficient provocation to discharge 7 ringleaders
of this “walkout” on the spot, without compensation, and 20 others according to
prescribed procedures. In this matter, the leardership of DISK’s representation was
excluded. The additional 70-80 participants in the dynamite visit to the notary were
allowed to remain. This prompted escalation of the clash. A spontaneous strike broke out
which continued the next day. The next day police were present everywhere about factory
grounds. The entrepreneur, moreover, now conveyed a notary to the factory itself. In the
notary’s presence workers were put under pressure to register themselves as members of
Metal-Is! Those who had participated in the previous day’s action were no longer in the
factory; all were fired. A number of workers refused to sign on as Metal-Is members and
declared their solidarity with the strikers so that they, too, lost their jobs… All in all, 200
workers were dismisses in the process. Metal-Is has won the right to be the official
representative of the factory workers during the negotiations with management
concerning the next collective labour aggrement! (Velzen,1977:131).
97
(Velzen: 1977: 173-194)39. On the other hand, Ayata draws a different conclusion
that the additional involvement of medium and large-scale industrial enterprises
into certain trading activities did not refer to the dominance of trade capitalism in
local industry; rather, the profits from trade were made, when necessary, to
support industrial investments (1991:201-3)40. For him, accumulation process in
Kayseri since the 1950s created strong tendencies of both embourgeoisification
and proleterianisation, giving rise to remarkable local industrial bourgeoisie along
with the development of particular local labour market formation. In this sense,
there appeared fundamental changes in local social relations in the course of such
industrialisation (Ayata, 1991:216).
39
It should be noted that this labour-intensive characteristic of investment in Kayseri had
a direct implication on class relations. Velzen, whilst explaining the power of employers
against workers, underlined that although workers’ strikes negatively effected the
employers’ profit, this did not reach at an alarming level leading the entrepreneurs into a
survival crisis. Indeed, there were cases in which strikes could provide employers with
certain advantageous to reduce the stocked products during the temporary stopping of
production (1977:132). Workers’ strike could then loose its real power within workplace
politics against the employer.
40
A recent PhD study on local industrial development, from an inter-generational
perspective within a neo-institutionalist approach, also argues for the compensative using
of trading activities in this period by specifically underlining local traditional families as
the basic economic actor/unit in Kayseri to involve simultaneously via different family
members both industrial investment and trading (Hovardaoglu, 2009: 126-8).
98
fundamental consequences of this process. First, to the extent that wage increases
were pressured to comply with the declining of consumption demands within
domestic market, this paved the way for the proliferation of conflicts between
local employers and workers in which class relations became politicized to such a
degree that even in medium sized enterprises workers could join the DISK-
affiliated unions to raise their demands 41 . Second, this politicisation was also
echoed in the wider local context. With the social democratic populist policies
appealing to the growing urban proletariat in the city, the centre-left party of CHP
came to the municipal power for the first time in the post-war period (Doğan,
2007:150-7).
It was then within such a politicized local context of the late-1970s that
whereas technological limits, competitive domestic market, declining
consumption demands and so on compelled local employers to take a stronger
offense to labour, neither workplace politics nor local urban politics could enable
them to move remarkably into this direction. In a prospective statement, Ayata
concluded his study at that time by arguing that local industrial accumulation
could only be continued through a particular system that would keep labour under
an intense “economic-social pressure” (1991: 218). Such a kind of system would
indeed bring along with the 1980s as the relatively conciliatory class relations of
the domestic accumulation pattern ended in a shift to the neoliberal policies at
national scale.
41
In a coincidental meeting with a local industrial man who went bankruptcy in the
2000s while managing a small scale workplace in the metal sector after the long years of
experience as a worker stretching back to late 1970s, for example, I was told by him as
follows: “In 1977, when I was 18 years old, I was working at Silver stove heater factory.
We were 80 people there. MİSK was the union. We were not happy with it we got
organized. When we were the majority with 55 people we went to DİSK and registered at
Maden-İş union. When the boss found out about it though we gathered us all and put a lot
of pressure. 15 of us resisted but not our other friends. We had to go to the court but the
court decided to give MİSK the authorization”
99
4.3. Development of Local Industry in Kayseri within Neoliberal Context
100
goods, local industrial firms were increasingly threatened with scrapping capacity
or closures due to the failure in competition with imports. In a number of statistics
on industrial production of Kayseri, there are clear signs showing that local firms
could not resist such value pressures. For example, while the provincial share by
Kayseri of the amount of value-added in the manufacturing of Turkey was 1.45
per cent in 1980, it has continuously decreased nearly by 40 per cent to 0.8
percent in 1992 (Bilgili, 2001). Besides, it is reported that the local industry’s
share within the provincial income distribution fell from 25 per cent in 1978 to
16,9 percent in 1992 (Özaslan and Şeftalici, 2002). Such a remarkable shrinking
within local industrial production seems to have continued until the beginning of
the 1990s:
On the other hand, there also appeared some alternative development ways
in local industrial production for which the success-stories of two different
industrial companies at that time have given the signs. Orta Anadolu, a local
multi-partnership company in textile sector, when left to an economic bottleneck,
was purchased in 1980 by the two originally Kayserian families living in Istanbul.
The first measure by the new management against financial difficulties was to fire
half of the workforce. As a short-term measure, the management also shifted to
produce cheap yarn and cloth for export market in order to achieve foreign
currency required for the renewing of production technologies. While having a
remarkable development in a few years, the company also begun to make business
contacts with the American clothing giant, Levi Strauss, which was seeking out
local suppliers for its European factories. With the using of cheap credit
opportunities by Turkey’s Industrial Development Bank in association with a
101
World Bank programme, the local company has invested over five year 70 million
US dollar for denim-cloth production, making itself one of there local suppliers
for Levi Strauss at the end of 1980s. In the mid-1990s, the Orta Anadolu
Company came to supply denim-cloth for the worldwide known brands (ESI,
2005: 14-15). Other multi-partnership companies in Kayseri in textile sector have
considerably been lined up along the route that Orta Anadolu Company took,
primarily being appropriated by their wealthier shareholders at the devalued
prices in the 1980s (Özdemir, 1999).
102
the food and beverage), while shifting remarkably to the inner Anatolian cities,
have got low-paid and unregistered workforce in comparison with other sectors
(Köse and Öncü, 2000). This situation has been especially valid in Kayseri,
because it was only the cheap labour that could be used by local firms as a
comparative advantage for industrial accumulation (Erdem, 2003; Bilgili, 2001).
Table 4.5: Ten Biggest Local Industrial Firms by the Amount of Export in 2000
42
It is reported that Kayseri has been the leading province in the 1990s where the
proportion of the establishment of workplaces and industrial districts on the basis of using
state incentives was the highest (Özdemir, 1999:95).
103
Table 4.5 (Continued)
Birlik Mensucat Towel 27,060,327
Erbosan Galvanised Pipe 23,016,364
Atlas Halı Carpet 17,819,274
HES Hacılar Telephone Cable 17,444,389
Merkez Celik Furniture (seat and home-textile) 14,029,819
Kumtel Telephone and Electric Heater 14,000,000
Ulutas Furniture (seat and home textile) 12,316,723
Source: Kayseri Chamber of Industry, quoted in Bilgili (2001:81)
The big companies in local industry have also been ranked upwards in the
list prepared by Istanbul Chamber of Industry of the biggest 500 industrial
enterprises of Turkey. In 2001 there were 16 local firms involved in this list—it
was 7 in 1991 (Erdem, 2003: 127). In addition to these big local firms, such
industrial boom was specifically characterized by the proliferation of small- and
medium-sized enterprises. The number of firms employing less than ten workers
was 6,235 in 1997, which was equal to 89 percent of the total number of local
industrial firms. Moreover, it rose to 8,307 in 2001 whilst there were only 179
firms employing more than 50 workers out of which the ones employing more
than 250 workers were just 26 firms (Erdem, 2003:117). Thus, according to the
latest official classification43, the number of small- and medium-sized firms in
Kayseri amounted to 99.7 percent of total industrial firms in 2001.
43
The latest official by-law on the definition of small and medium-sized enterprises
considers big-seized firms as employing more than 250 workers. In this line, small firms
are defined as those firms employing less than 50 workers.
104
giving some accessories. In other words, there was no sophisticated component in
furniture production partly except for sponge. Therefore, it was possible to enter
with small savings into the furniture sector promising to bring gain only on the
condition that a sufficient amount of labour could be afforded to compete at
product-markets. Thus, industrial entrepreneurs having the capacity to mobilise
enough labour within family ties, religious fellowships and other social networks
for production gave a massive interest in local furniture sector especially in the
second part of the 1990s 44 . This reached rapidly at a point that furniture
production came to surpass by employment other local industrial activities in few
years. This is clearly understood from local industrial statistics based on the 2000
General Census of population in comparison with the ones in 1994 yet
considering only workers at firms employing more than 10 employees.
Table 4.6 Major Local Industrial Sectors by Employment in 1994 and 2000
44
The aforementioned PhD study on the proliferation of entrepreneurs from Hacılar town
in Kayseri’s industrial development argues that, despite its currently decreasing
importance, patriarchal order has been very critical factor in both start up and
development of firms: “This patriarch could be a grandfather, father, big brother or the
educated brother of the family. Here the critical point is the existence of this founding
and legitimate patriarchal authority even if he makes a mistake” (Cengiz, 2012: 210). In
one of my managerial interviews, a respondent from a medium sized workplace
producing metal panel radiators similarly mentioned such patriarchal order in his critical
statement, using a conventional phrase to define the simplicity of local companies: “a
table, a safe and a Hajji Uncle. That’s it!” (Bi masa, Bi kasa, bi de Hacı Dayı. Hepsi bu!)
105
stuff. The development of local furniture sector arrived at a point that Kayseri
rapidly rose in 1996 to the second province in terms of the share of the value-
added produced within wood and furniture sector at national scale in spite of its
comparative disadvantage as having lack of forest in its surroundings (Ataay,
2001: 91). However, local furniture production was largely for domestic market.
In terms of exportation, it fell far behind textile and metal-fabricated stuff
production whose exports amount to respectively around 65 per cent and 20 per
cent of the total amount of local industrial export45 (Erdem, 2003:137).
45
It should be noted that the provincial amount of export production in Kayseri
constituted at that time only 0,71 percent of the total national amount of export
production. Yet, the amount of furniture exports was striking: while constituting only 7.3
percent of total provincial export, it was equal to 5.95 percent of total furniture exports at
the national level. This seems to imply for two things: First, furniture sector has
remarkably concentrated in Kayseri as opposed to relatively industrialized cities; second,
it was highly oriented to domestic markets in comparison with other sectors.
46
The data was taken from Kayseri Memory Center (KAYHAM), which is a joint-center
in Kayseri University set up in collaboration with Kayseri Chamber of Industry.
47
In the Census of 2000, there seems to be an inconsistent date on the number of female
workforce in local economy. Although the SSK registration argues that there were 12,456
women at work, the Census declares it as 3,369. Normally, the opposite would be
expected because of the registered workforce avoidance. In this context, when the SSK
106
been remarkably evident within local industry as it had been before 1980. In the
interviews with workers, which will be referred much in the next chapter, even
some local firms listed in the biggest 500 industrial enterprises at the national
scale are reported to have long used unregistered and causal employment until the
mid-2000s48.
registration is considered, the number of male workers appears as 69,074. This then adds
more to the level of unregistered male workers
48
For example, a metal worker from a local industrial company that has been listed in the
biggest 500 firms at the national level since 2005 said to me that when he had started to
work six years ago, there had been no insurance and any official registration offered to
him: “Right now I’m working in the cable room. I started at the assembly line, and
worked there for a very long time. When I was there I didn’t have insurance, we would
work under the foreman….we would work for him, meaning we didn’t have ties to the
factory. We worked for 2-3 years like that with no insurance. Things got bigger, and the
factory made a deal with the Italians in 2008. They were going to export to them. When
that happened, they insured some of us. I got insured too. Until then, and I’m not
exaggerating, 80% of us were not insured” (W15).
49
Besides Kayseri OIDs, local industrial activities have been carried out within the Free
Industrial Zone adjacent to it and two other OIDs called Mimar Sinan and Incesu on the
southern and eastern outskirts of the city respectively. Moreover, there have been six
industrial districts in the city where relatively small-scale enterprises have been in
operation (Kayseri Valiliği, 2011).
107
and the northern parts of the city developed as working class housing areas with
multi-storey apartments as well as squatter buildings (Doğan, 2007; Hovardaoğlu,
2009). Thus, land value speculations and building sector appeared to be the
important part of local economy and politics so much so that many investors in
industrial areas were reported to seek only to benefit from the rising land values,
thereby hindering the actual industrial investments (Hovardaoğlu, 2009:185;
Özcan, 2006:130). However, this situation did not lead to an essential cleavage
within local bourgeoisie, mainly because they generally hold trading and
industrial investments at the same time thanks to the enduring dominance of
family firms within local economy (Hovardaoglu; 2009) 50 . In short, the rising
urban population expanded not only urban labour market but also urban land
market both of which were used by local bourgeoisie in a complementary way for
the sake of capital accumulation.
To sum up, throughout the two decades following neoliberal shift at the
national level, local industry in Kayseri had been fundamentally restructured
along certain labour-intensive sectors namely textile, metal fabricated stuff and
furniture in a manner that small and medium-sized enterprises proliferated on the
basis of using cheap labour with low-level technologies. Some of these enterprises
also became large-scale industrial enterprises with integrated production plants
and dominated local industry in many ways ranging from employment to product
50
Yet, it should be noted that local bourgeoisie have been fragmented with urban-
political alliances between centrist and Islamist projects in the 1990s. Within the process
of proliferation of small- and medium-sized firms in local industry, a section of local
commercial capital mainly involved in a town-centred religious community called Cami-i
Kebir turned into a broader, influential social and economic force that could be no longer
subjected to the centrist project conventionally supported by the local big capital. Parallel
with the rise of Islamic movement at wider scales, such social and economic force took
over local municipal power of Kayseri in 1994 (Dogan, 2007: 190-200). It is within this
changing local political alliances that municipal power has been actively involved in local
economy on behalf of these nascent small- and medium-sized capital, which created
apparent tension with the conventional local capital especially in the decision-making and
implementation processes of big scale local developmental projects such as the
establishment of Free Zone Industrial District and the Yamula Dam Project (see Özcan,
2006).
108
capacity and productivity51. In this process while urban labour market grew with
the low-skilled labourers mostly having rural-links, local employers tended to
consider this labour market formation as comparative local advantage for
competitive production. Within a patriarchal order, they also employed broader
social relations such as local fellowships, religious sects or other communitarian
ties in order to sustain such advantage. At this point, the rapid increasing of
furniture firms with relatively simple labour process suitable to be organised even
in small workshops, facilitated the widespread development of such paternalistic
capital-labour relation based on non-organised, unregistered or casual
employment within local industry. A considerable level of capital accumulation
was then achieved mainly through the ways of increasing direct work pressure on
labourers, albeit softened within an active involvement of wider local social
relations into workplace-level relations. In other words, it is possible to argue that
local industrial production proceeded within a particular form of socialisation in
which a massive influx of low-skilled labour became aligned into labour intensive
production process within many small and medium-sized workplaces as well as in
a few large-scale enterprises. Nevertheless, this form of socialisation was so
fragile against value relations that local industry could be easily shocked by short-
term national economic fluctuations in both 1994 and 1999, with remarkable lay-
offs and closures. However, it was at the same time so flexible that local industry
could be rapidly restructured in the same manner as before without apparent
serious class dispute. Yet, the 2001 crisis would be different for local industry not
51
For example, interviewee from a major local cable factory told me that: “Generally
speaking, as the companies grew, separate factories have been built gradually to produce
such things constituting the main inputs. 90% of their production is for our companies,
but they also produce for the market. In HES Kablo the aluminum and copper sections
were also built as a separate factory. We buy the cable sheath and plastic/sleeve from our
conglomerate’s factories” (M1). Similary, when asked for the organization of production,
another managerial respondent from the leading bed factory portrayed a very integrated
organization within the wider inside linkages of company: “Let’s take our bedding
company as an example. What we do in Kayseri is mostly assembly. That is to say, the
metal accents of the bed come from our group’s company Boyçelik; the sponge comes
from our Form Sünger; and the fabric, likewise, comes from one of our group companies
called BoyTekstil. We assemble them here accordingly, stitch the sides and give them
their final form” (M5).
109
just because of its deeper destruction but also due to the prospective development
path it requires.
52
The data was taken from Kayseri Memory Center (KAYHAM), which is a joint-center
in Kayseri University set up in collaboration with Kayseri Chamber of Industry.
53
As the first stage of empirical research in this PhD study, I made semi-structured
interviews with 40 managerial people from local industrial enterprises among which only
one called Orta Anadolu Textile Company is located outside Kayseri OID. Since the aim
is to unravel local industrial pattern including some technical and organisational aspects
of production, interviewees were preferred to be the person with a top-level managerial
position such as factory or production manager. They were expected to answer the
questions about the strategies by their firms in and after the 2001 crisis period with regard
to the labour process, labour market and product market as well as wider social processes
related with industrial production. In this line, 40 local industrial enterprises were
detected, of which 15 firms are in furniture sector, 12 firms in metal-stuff production, 5
firms in textile sector, 5 firms producing small machine, 2 firms in food sector and 1 firm
producing plastic pipe. In terms of scale, 19 firms can be classified as big-sized
(employing more than 250 workers), 14 firms as medium-sized and 7 firms as small-sized
(employing less than 50 workers). With regard to ownership structure, 27 firms are
depicted as family-firm in the form of either incorporated company (15) or limited
company (12). Furthermore, 5 firms are defined as incorporated company subjected to a
holding company. The remaining ones are told to be as limited or incorporated companies
without family links.
110
these firms against the consequences of the crisis was to reduce the workforce at
around 20 to 25 per cent.
Table 4.7 The Number of Local Firms by Employment before and after the 2001
Crisis
54
“After the 1980s, the industrialization process (which had been started by big public
investments in the past) accelerated with Özal and his economic policy, export incentives,
and with the incentives given to OSB regions. Periodic crisis naturally disrupted this
progress from time to time. The crisis of 2001, the devaluation in 1995, and various
previous crises all affected industrial progress. However, I view this positively. Of course
nobody wants crises, but these crises in Turkey were an eye-opener for industrialists.
They now realize that they have to change according to the changing conditions. 2001
was an example of this. There were obviously some companies that had a hard time, and
some of them had to stop the production. But the case remains that every cloud has a
silver lining, this was the case. Our industrialists decided to act much more smart after the
experience of 2001” (C6). This evaluation is also shared by a manager from the leading
furniture company in local industry: “Our firm benefitted from the 2001 crises. All the
factories let their workers go at the time of the crises, and so their capacity declined. Most
of these were qualified, experienced workers. We may have had difficulty paying the
wages for some time, but never had to let workers go. Once the effects of the crises faded
111
such a renewal was seen in exportation since local companies increasing their
profits in spite of the crisis conditions appeared to be the ones that have already
produced for export markets. In interviews, 23 firms out of those 25 firms
damaged in the crisis period are reported to have restructured themselves along
the export-oriented production as a way of overcoming the consequences of crisis.
This tendency is also reflected in a number of statistics on local export. For
example, although there had been 146 exporting firms in Kayseri, the number of
them became 272 in 2001 and then rapidly increased to 677 in 2007. The increase
in the amount of export production is more striking: while being equal to 207
million US dollar in 1996 and 319 million dollar in 2001, it sharply increased in
2008 to 1,129 million dollar. However, the local (provincial) share of the amount
of export within the national GDP has not changed remarkably, which implies that
this widespread shift in local industry towards export production has still been
based on low value-added products55.
away and the jobs bloomed again, our factories got most of the work because the others
simply fell short of the demand. It was the same in the crisis of 2008” (M5).
55
In one of the managerial interviews, a respondent from a medium-sized furniture
company depicted this situation as follows: “what we actually have done in export
production is nothing more than drudgery, menial work because our great effort to fill
tens of transporters with sofa, bed and so on, is indeed equal to only one transporter
exporting machine products” (M8).
112
Table 4.8 (Continued)
2001 338 1.17 319,191 1.02
2002 387 1.22 351,569 0.97
2003 458 1.29 465,104 0.98
2004 533 1.35 639,617 1.01
2005 579 1.37 702, 969 0.96
2006 612 1.39 751,660 0.88
2007 677 1.40 973,209 0.91
2008 618 1.28 1,129,770 0.86
2009 645 1.33 963,223 0.94
Source: KAYHAM
56
The data was taken from Kayseri Memory Center (KAYHAM), which is a joint-center
in Kayseri University set up in collaboration with Kayseri Chamber of Industry.
113
Table 4.9: The Number of Industrial Firms (by sector) in Kayseri OID between
2000 and 2010
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Sector
Food 16 15 16 16 16 ? 24 29 26 31 38
Chemistry 9 9 19 19 16 ? 15 15 14 ? 23
Machine 24 24 12 2 2 ? 25 24 5 ? 34
Metal stuff 51 48 52 135 135 ? 169 124 114 134 135
Plastic and 24 23 17 24 24 ? 40 63 ? ? 73
Packaging
Textile 57 55 55 64 64 ? 87 84 90 79 86
Furniture ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 249 ? 228 258
Other 22 212 174 178 178 ? 41 132 460 ? ?
6
Source: KAYHAM
114
furniture firm who underlined increasing difficulties to compete with the large-
scale firms at market. This respondent, whose firm fully left behind separate
production and run as a subcontractor for İstikbal, the leading local furniture
company, also stated that subcontracting for the leading local firms came to be
increasingly acceptable for small- and medium-sized independent firms as it
became difficult to compete with them. He summarizes the new situation for
small and medium sized firms as follows: “even if it does’t rain, at least it drips
in this way”57.
The other side of the same coin has been the development of
subcontracting relations with international companies. In the interviews, it is
revealed that international subcontracting relations have been proceeded primarily
through those local leading firms which have also their branded products at both
national and even international market. Out of 19 big-seized firms, there are only
9 firms that were mentioned to have no current subcontracting relation with
international companies. Looked in detail, these firms belong to either the ones
producing some specific semi-finished goods like steel cable, yarn and so on, or
the ones producing specifically for domestic market. However, such big-seized
local firms involved in international subcontracting relations are mostly concerned
with the basic consumption goods such as electrical heater, oven, couch and other
furniture products. On the other hand, there is no example in which a small and
medium sized firm directly develops international subcontracting relations. The
main way for exporting is then via the leading firms of local industry. The
exception, however, belongs to few local firms specifically involved in the
57
Similar espousals of subcontracting to major firms in local furniture sector are also
reported by Cengiz’s study on Hacılar industry in depth-interviews with the owners of
small firms: “There have been really established a supplier industry around furniture.
However, none of them actually desire to produce for Istikbal. I don’t like. Why? They
have incredible purchasing agents. They don’t let you earn 5 kurus profit. They know the
production cost very well and proposes that exact prices: “do if you want brother”.
Someone accept if you don’t; because, most of them are in trouble. So, actually it is not a
good thing. Both they have an immense volume of transportation and it is a continuous
business when there is no job at all. At the end of the day, it is a business better than not”
(quoted in Cengiz, 2012: 180).
115
production of some distinct production machinery. In a nutshell, the development
of export production within local industry has increasingly led to the emergence
of a hierarchical production chain of basic consumption goods that is controlled
by major local firms operating under the determination of international purchasing
firms.
58
At this point, central state’s incentive packages seem to have played crucial role in
ameliorating the consequences of crisis on industrial enterprises. For example, interviews
revealed that local industrial workers were forced at that time to use provisional work
grant in which local employer becomes responsible to pay workers only 4 day week-wage
to be complemented by the state on condition that no redundancy takes place. It should
116
a remarkable number of workforces in local industry were made redundant.
According to the SSK registration, while there had been 155,862 registered
workforces in May 2008 when the contraction was initially felt, it decreased
rapidly to 127,990 in less than one year. The number of firms within local
economy at that time has only reduced from 18,136 to 17,686 59. It is then safe to
argue that the destructive effects of recent global economic crisis could be
avoided to a certain extent primarily through shifting its burden onto workers. It
seems that contraction in local industry was recovered in 2010. Interviews with
the managerial people make it clear that local industrial recovery was made in a
relatively short time thanks to the increasing export production into new consumer
markets such as those in Middle-East, Middle-Asia and North Africa60.
also be noted that such a seemingly Keynesian state intervention was financially
supported not by the general budget but a specific fund designated for unemployed
people. The irony continues, as I witnessed in my interviews with workers, when a
worker who previously used such work grant then becomes redundant. In this case, it is
not allowed to apply for unemployment benefits for a limited period as the worker is
already considered to have used his/her share in the fund. Besides this support, employers
were given remarkable temporal tax concessions to such a significant degree that local
employers demanded them to be continued: “Right now in the sector everyone’s been
anxiously waiting. What are we going to do once this tax reduction is over? We’re saying
this should go on until December instead of September” (Boydak, 2009: 30).
59
The data was taken from Kayseri Memory Center (KAYHAM), which is a joint-center
in Kayseri University set up in collaboration with Kayseri Chamber of Industry.
60
In addition to respondents from industrial enterprises, Prof. Nisfet Uzay from Erciyes
University Department of Economics, who is also advisor of Kayseri Chamber of
Industry, told me that there has been a remarkable shift in local industrial export to the
Arab and African countries over the last few years. This is also confirmed by the words
of the chairman of the Assembly of Kayseri Chamber of Industry as follows: “More than
52% of the Kayseri Chamber of Industry’s members’ exports are for EU countries. Due
to the financial crisis, the market for EU countries has shrunk. For the past five months
we have been recommending that our members enter the middle eastern, African, CIS,
Iranian, and Iraqi markets instead” (Okadan, 2009: 26).
117
within which large-scale enterprises remarkably control the main dynamics of
local industry thanks to their relatively high technological capacity and integrated
organisation of production. Yet, such hierarchy takes different forms according to
sectoral differentiations in labour process. For example, to the extent that labour-
intensiveness remains the considerable aspect of production in furniture sector,
small- and medium-sized furniture firms have been able to survive within partial
or full subcontracting production assembling around the leading local firms. As
for the metal production; however, there has been rather a kind of partition on the
basis of product types between large-scale firms and small and medium-sized
firms, fundamentally because its labour process, especially cutting and pressing
stages, relatively involves more technology-intensive means of production when it
comes to the production of electrical stuff. In addition, it seems to be less suitable
to divide labour process into different pieces to be carried out at different
workplaces. On the other hand, local textile sector has developed in a more
concentrated manner partially except for cotton selection or coloring stages. Yet,
there has been remarkable differentiation among textile firms between the ones
only producing yarn and others that have been able to extend production to
weaving cloth. However, when extra capacity is needed, the former can also be
involved in subcontracting relation with the latter.
61
According to TUIK Census based on the address register, the population of Kayseri
(town) has become 977,340 by 2010. It was 732,410 in 2000.
62
The data was taken from Kayseri Memory Center (KAYHAM), which is a joint-center
in Kayseri University set up in collaboration with Kayseri Chamber of Industry.
118
in local employment has taken place by far in private sector with a 91 percent
share. Another aspect of local employment is concerned with the extreme gender
differentiation to the detriment of female workers: only 27,993 women are
registeredly employed in the face of 144,274 male workers 63 . In terms of
industrial employment, the latest official report puts that there has been at least
51,500 workers most of which are employed in Kayseri OID. It is also reported
that industrial employment is led by furniture sector with 10,695 workers,
followed by textile and metal sectors (Kayseri Valiliği, 2011).
Last but not least, unionization is strongly inhibited within local industry
until it appears unavoidably as a result of strong demands from workers. The
evidence is the low level of unionization among the 19 big-seized industrial
enterprises whose managerial people were interviewed: only 6 firms, of them,
have unionized workers. However, the number of unionised labour in private
sector is statistically seen as rising from 10,254 in 2000 to 21,755 in 2006.
However, even once leaving aside the inflated nature of the unionization statistics
in Turkey, such a remarkable increasing still remains low in comparison with the
fact that the number of registered workers has grown nearly by 150 percent at the
same period. More importantly, local unionization practice has developed along a
particular route under employers’ direct control. This is so apparent that, when
asked about unionization, a managerial interviewee from a large-scale company
ironically admitted “employer decided to bring trade union into factory in
response to increasing voices among workers” (M15). In this sense, the seemingly
quantitative increase in unionism does not seem to be taken as the rise of
relatively independent labour organization but rather an increasing level of
dissidence among labourers.
63
A recent comparative study on female employment in different Turkish cities argues
that the rate of women work participation in Kayseri (9%) is by far lower than Istanbul
(21.5%) and Denizli (28,3%). However, it is above Gaziantep with 6% (Buğra, 2010).
119
4.4. Concluding Remarks: Contradictions within Local Industry
Over the fifty years, local (private) industry in Kayseri has transformed
from small craft production with two to three employees into well-designed
agglomerations of remarkable amount of investments mainly in furniture, metal
and textile sectors in which more than 800 firms employ at least 50,000 registered
workers to produce not just for domestics market but also considerably for wider
markets in ways mainly through taking part directly or indirectly in
subcontracting relations with international companies.
In this process, some local social and spatial forms played essential roles
by accelerating industrial development in particular directions. The establishment
of Crafts Square, where exclusive craft activities had an opportunity to develop
cooperative relations for serial production, appeared to be the prime mover of
local industrial development. Then, worker remittances that were channeled into
local industry in the form of multi-partner companies, while providing money
capital for the introduction of mass production techniques, led to the converting of
qualified workforce in crafting into jobseekers in labour market as small
workshops became outweighed by competitiveness. With 1980s, however,
neoliberal strategies with the guardianship of military regime in Turkey brought a
new context in which local industry could appeal to the increasing attempts by
capital for restructuring labour-intensive sectors towards less developed regions.
In this context, after a period of regression resulting with some takeovers in multi-
partner companies, local industrial firms became regenerated particularly in ways
to develop subcontracting relations with larger companies by using the main
comparative advantage of Kayseri as having vast amount of cheap labour. Yet, the
prospective development of local industry was distinctively shaped by the
unprecedented boom in local furniture production on the basis of the contingent
combination of a number of local and national dynamics. Since being depended
on a relatively simple labour process with low-level technological equipment,
furniture production within local industry appeared to proliferate in a few years
with a particular class relation based on casual and unregistered employment that
has been also complemented with wider local social relations, i.e., family links,
120
ethnic-community ties and religious discourse and practice. The formation of
such religious kind of paternalist class relation has also been facilitated by central
state’s continuing anti-trade union policies after transition to parliamentary
democracy in 1983. Hence appeared two remarkable results in local industry. In
as much as requiring relatively less money to start production, local furniture
sector revitalized to a certain degree the process of primitive accumulation within
local industry in which the bourgeois ‘success’ story from a hard-working
employee to an employer could find some concrete expressions, with their
ideological repercussions. Furthermore, as furniture production became the
prominent sector for capital accumulation, its religious-paternalist class relation
came to be a hegemonic position within local industrial relations and business
culture.
121
has made itself felt widely especially in the wake of global economic crisis of
2008 that accelerated competition as a result of big contractions in consumer
market.
Therefore, the post-2001 period has also compelled local industrial firms
to transform their labour processes into more competitive lines, forms or sectors. I
think Mustafa Boydak, the chairman of Kayseri Chamber of Industry, hints at this
pressure in his following words (2008: 126):
During my field study trips, I was told, and directly observed, that there
have been remarkable hints of such a transformation within local industry. For
example, a managerial respondent from a long-year big-sized metal company that
had produced iron-casting stoves until shifting to the production of electrical
heater, oven and so on in the beginning of the 2000s, said that the company has
just agreed with a Chinese firm to produce together washing machine, refrigerator
and television in its recently built workplaces at Kayseri Free Industrial Zone. I
have also seen some local machine firms producing with high-technological
equipment in various attempts to invest more. Even local furniture sector whose
labour process has been characterized more with labour-intensiveness is
considered to involve a similar transformation: “It is certainly to be seen also in
furniture sector to have fundamental transformation concerning with workforce
profiles after the (global) crisis. It is necessary to qualify labourers, attract them
into workplaces, have a business tradition led by creative and innovative
companies, improve workforce profile, strengthen the resources and support a
sense of belonging” (Bozkır, 2008:79).
122
Thus, what has been inherently compelled, and also actively pursued,
within local industrial development is eventually centred on the employment of a
qualified labour force that would be compatible with changing dynamics of labour
process. Given that local industry has so far developed through a particular class
relation based on the employment of a relatively unqualified workforce in a low-
wage regime, such a fundamental tendency for qualified labour indeed refers to an
opposite movement against the dominant forms of socialisation of production and
reproduction in local industry. Put it differently, competitive dynamics of
industrial accumulation push for a larger transformation of local industrial
relations involving the moments of labour market, workplace relations and urban
social structures. In each moment, however, there have been various ongoing
forms of socialisation in contradiction with this transformation: continuing influx
of unqualified workforce into local labour market, employer’s insistence on low-
wage regime and disciplinary labour management, informally-operating business
practice, conservative social life and community culture, formal and informal
widespread income supports and so on. Thus conceived, the so-called
transformation process primarily requires getting an influential social actor to
coordinate different moments of local industrial relations at different spatial scales
in a compatible direction. As the dominant institutional nodes of local power
relations, the Greater Municipality of Kayseri, Kayseri Chamber of Industry and
Middle-Anatolia Development Agency comes to the fore to play such a role in
local politics.
In this process; nevertheless, the other side of the same coin has been
composed of growing number of labourers employed within similar experiences
of labour process and urban social relations that have been increasingly shaped by
capitalist dynamics. It is clear that this situation leads to systematic social
differences in both workplace and urban contexts of Kayseri. These differences
indeed conflict with this religious kind of paternalist class relation between
employer and employees in local industry. Thus, the ways in which this conflict
has developed within local class relations are worthy to ask a question. The next
chapter will try to answer this question.
123
CHAPTER 5
5.1. Introduction
124
medium- and small-sized workplaces, and a set of complementary social
reproduction policies within a medium-scaled city of Kayseri. In this context, the
(ideology of) Islamic brotherhood has also been employed in capital-labour
relation in distinct ways serving to cover class tensions embedded in this relation.
It was then a religious kind of paternalist relation between capital and labour that
produced unprecedented industrial accumulation in Kayseri. Nevertheless,
Chapter 4 also pointed out that as competitive dynamics of industrial production
have accelerated especially in a wider context of post-2001 economic crisis, this
paternalist relation came to be incompatible with the dynamics of industrial
development.
This chapter attempts to deal with this period. Since capital-labour relation
is analytically considered as involving the three fundamental social processes
above mentioned, this period will be analysed in three main sections dedicated to
each process. Before these sections, the following section initially provides a
general outline and some observations about the method of research for the field
research in Kayseri.The next section then looks at the social and spatial dynamics
of local labour market formation. The main aim of the section is to understand the
ways and forms in which labourers are involved into industrial relations. In the
third section, the attention is shifted to the production process and workplace-
level relations in order to reveal the tensions and conflicts in the capital-labour
relation within labour process. The section is divided into three parts: technical
divison of labour and inter-firm relations; working conditions and wage regime;
and labour control strategies and workers’ responses. The fourth section focuses
on (urban) social reproduction process. It aims to analyse three important aspects
of class relations within this process: local business culture; urban-workplace
nexus; and working class culture and class-consciousness. The fifth section
summarizes main findings of the previous sections in a set of concluding remarks.
125
capital-labour relation developed here as a set of class contradictions at the
highest level of abstraction. The research is then aimed to track the ways in which
such abstract contradictions meld into complex combinations as the capital-labour
relation develop in time and space. In this regard, the research is considered
neither as a theoretical study on local class relations nor a pure empirical
investigation their concrete expressions but rather a theoretically informed
analysis that seeks to reveal the development of such abstract class contradictions
in Kayseri over time.
126
of semi-structured interviews with the workers was kept high to the extent that
they can enable the researcher to arrive at some quantitative results.
127
workers constitute still less than 10 percent of the whole employment in local
industry. Yet, it should be underlined that local employers have tended to increase
female workers in recent years as much as technical aspects of labour process in
local industy make it possible. Thus, it would be necessary for the future analysis
to involve the gender aspects of local class relations in Kayseri.
64
Despite 911,064 city dwellers registered in Kayseri (province), there is a large number
of people living in Kayseri yet having other provincial registeration: the major non-
Kayserian registers are respectively 71,803 (Sivas), 55,287 (Yozgat), 31,408 (Nevşehir)
and 22,295 (K.Maraş), 18, 584 (Agrı) and 15,402 (Adana) (TÜİK, 2010, ADKNS
database).
128
movements not only from local and provincial places but also from its wider
regional hinterland that is even reached to Ağrı province, which is located on the
eastern border of the country.65
65
Although it is not surprising to encounter in any growing cities with migrants from the
Kurdish-dominated places in eastern parts of the country, the fact that Kurdish migrant
people constituting remarkable part of Kayseri dwellers almost came from Ağrı can be
found interesting. There is very limited information on why people from Ağrı particularly
moved to Kayseri. Yet, there is one possible explanation: Shafi (Şafi) religious sect of the
people from Ağrı which has strong conservative values enables them to be adopted by the
dominant local culture in Kayseri.
66
To illustrate, when the city’s major football team (Kayserispor) was defeated and left
behind by a recently-founded football team from a small town, Hacılar, which was
sponsored by a leading industrial company whose owners were coming from the same
town, this became a wider event for the relations between the native urbanite and the
peasants. Faced with increasing reactions within local politics, the owners of such
industrial company urgently decided to withdraw its sponsorship relation (see Boydak,
2011:355).
129
Kayseri receives labor migration from neighboring cities and towns. Because there
is no industry in those places, workers come here to work. Unless we are looking
for someone specific, these fulfill our needs.
Now 547 of our nearly 800 employees are from Kayseri; meaning they’re from
Hacılar and other towns and villages. Locals aren’t generally industrial workers. Of
the rest, 68% are from Yozgat, 53% are from Sivas, 52% are from Nevşehir and
24% are from Maraş (M1).
While similarly pointing out this distinction, another manager from a local
thread mill that flourished after 2001 crisis also revealed that industrial labour
market has increasingly got regional characteristics as a result of subsequent
migration flows:
People from Kayseri, especially locals, do not like working very much. Our people
come from the villages and towns. Most of our workers are from Maraş, Yozgat
and Sivas. (M2).
130
Table 5.1 The Profile of Industrial Workforce in Kayseri
Number of Current
Age/ Birth of Father’s Date of Educati previous Job
W G Place Occupation Migration on jobs (sector)
Kayseri
1 23/M (city) worker 1977 S 3 metal
textile-
2 39/M Sivas farmer 1990 P 4 thread
textile-
3 36/M Aksaray farmer 1998 H 5 thread
4 32/M Kayseri farmer 2002 S 5 metal
street-
5 25/M Kayseri vendor 2012 S 3 furniture
6 34/M Kayseri officer 1988 H 2 furniture
7 35/M Kayseri farmer 2002 S 3 metal
Kayseri
8 24/M (city) shopkeeper 1976 VH 2 furniture
textile-
9 27/M Kayseri farmer 1988 S 2 thread
Kayseri construc.
10 30/M (city) worker 2006 P 5 furniture
construct.
11 21/M Kayseri worker 1992 S 1 metal
12 26/M Kayseri worker 1994 H 3 metal
Kayseri construct.
13 44/M (city) worker 1977 H 4 furniture
14 23/M Kayseri Worker 1998 S 3 metal
Kayseri
15 34/M (city) farmer 1988 P 1 metal
16 32/M Austuria shopkeeper 1993 L 3 metal
17 33/M Kayseri shopkeeper 1979 P 3 furniture
construc.w
18 28/M Kayseri orker 1990 P 2 furniture
19 24/M Kayseri officer 2005 P 2 metal
20 32/M Yozgat farmer 2011 H 5 metal
21 29/M Yozgat farmer 1995 P 1 furniture
22 33/M Yozgat worker 1985 P 2 food
23 26/M Nevsehr farmer 2002 S 2 furniture
24 39/M Kayseri farmer 1990 VH 5 metal
25 32/M Kayseri farmer 1994 VH 4 metal
26 24/M Kayseri farmer 1994 S 1 metal
textile-
27 36/M Kayseri worker 1986 H 3 thread
28 39/M Kayseri farmer 1986 P 3 food
29 30/M Adana worker 1982 VH 3 furniture
30 35/M Nigde farmer 1999 P 4 metal
31 50/M Nevsehr farmer 1974 P 3 furniture
32 30/M Sivas worker 1977 S 1 metal
33 47/M Maras farmer 1993 P 2 metal
131
Table 5.1 (Continued)
34 32/M Kayseri farmer 2004 H 1 furniture
35 35/M Sivas farmer 2004 H 1 furniture
36 37/M Kayseri worker 1976 S 5 furniture
state-
37 21/M Kayseri officer 1988 H 1 metal
38 23/W Sivas farmer 2008 S 2 metal
39 28/W Kayseri farmer 2003 S 2 metal
Kayseri construc.
40 29/M (city) worker 1978 H 3 metal
41 33/M Sivas farmer 2005 VH 3 metal
Kayseri
42 27/M (city) state officer 2008 H 3 metal
plastic-
chemica
43 22/M Kayseri farmer - VH 3 l
construct.
44 21/M Kayseri worker 1978 H 3 metal
45 31/M Kayseri farmer 2003 H 3 metal
46 33/M Kayseri farmer 1993 H 2 metal
Kayseri- shop-
47 37/M Hacılar keeper - H 3-4 furniture
48 31/M Kayseri farmer 2003 P 4 metal
state-
49 34/M Maraş officer 1996 VH 4-5 metal
Kayseri street
50 30/M (city) vendor 1970 H 3-4 metal
Kayseri construct.
51 25/M (city) worker 1983 S 3 textile
construc.
52 23/M Kayseri worker 2012 H 3-4 textile
53 43/M Nevsehr farmer 1982 VH 6-7 metal
54 41/W Maras farmer 1993 P 3-4 metal
55 35/M Kayseri farmer 1975 P 1 furniture
W: Worker, G: Gender, M: Male, F: Female, P: Primary school, S: Secondary
School, H: High School, VH: Vocational High School
132
1980), high or low level of labour militancy (Burawoy, 1985), and open or
conservative cultural values among workers (Mann, 1973). The velocity, scope
and temporality of labour migration are also associated with the development of
class relations by pointing out the effects of migration on political radicalism and
social change. To illustrate, Mann (1973) argued for certain relations between
migrant workers and their political directions, exemplifying workers in France
and Germany as two opposing cases. It is also argued that the direction of
migration that involves its impulse, mechanisms and destination brings important
results to the formation of class relations as it reshuffles proletarian workforce in
space and, in turn, affects social division of labour in particular ways (Özuğurlu,
2006:73).
67
In other words, there are only two workers who have Kayseri (city) register. This result
is indeed parallel with a popular belief among workers in Kayseri that “the native
urbanites do not become industrial worker”.
133
in the 2000s. The number of migrant workers is more striking in the period of
local industrial revival along neoliberal policies: there are reportedly 25 workers
who (or whose family) migrated to the city of Kayseri after 1993, revealing that
nearly half of the workers has homeland-ties outside the city. Seen from the
variations on homeland-ties, the non-Kayseri registers are nearly in the ratio of
2:3 to the Kayseri (province) registers. The former are respectively from Sivas (6),
Yozgat (3), Nevsehir (3), Maraş (3), Nigde (1), Adana (1), Aksaray (1), Ağrı (1),
Kırıkkale (1) and Erzurum (1), denoting the spatial extent of local industrial
labour market at regional scale. Coming to the birthplaces; however, while the
number of workers born in the city of Kayseri rises from 2 to 10, that of non-
Kayseri registers has a slight decrease to 18. This raises the idea that a remarkable
number of urban-based industrial workers in Kayseri have developed over the
years despite the fact that the city has increasingly been the main destination in
recent years for labour migration from rural geographies within its regional
hinterland.
My father was in the construction business. He worked at construction sites for 30-
35 years, but does not work anymore. They used to come to Kayseri to work for 6-
7 months and then go back to Ağrı. Once he got married, they moved here for good
so as not to go back and forth all the time (W10).
134
My father was a construction worker. We were in a Talas village. When I was 7
years old, my father moved us all to the city. I also worked in construction, then
moved to the factory (W13).
My father is a farmer, and we used to plant and grow sugar beets. When the beet
business wasn’t doing so well, my father said ‘It’s no good here; if you’re going to
go to the dogs, go to the dogs in the city so that at least your kids will be better off.
So I migrated in 2004. I had an older relative who helped me find a job, so I came
here and started to work at İstikbal (W34).
It’s been 32-33 years since my father immigrated. He worked at Sümerbank. That’s
why he came to Kayseri. He worked for about 10 years, and they took him as a
retiree after he died (W32).
It is clearly seen that the main part of current local industrial workforce have
intensely stemmed from the demise of agricultural activities in the surrounding
provincial areas in that there are reportedly 18 rural background workers among
those 25 workers who have migrated to work in the city with the revival of local
industry since 1994. Following this fact and considering the rapid increase in
urban population at that time, it is safe to argue that behind the rise of industrial
activities in Kayseri have considerably been the precipitate labour flows mostly
from rural and poor geographies at the regional hinterland of the city. It should be
added that such flows have taken place during a particular time in which
neoliberal policies have been expansively imposed on economic activities across
wider scales. Thus, a vast amount of rural people in middle Anatolia were thrown
into local industrial labour market in Kayseri in a very short time as labourers to
sell their labour power.
135
local labour market in recent years. For local employers, central state’s local job
centre and newspaper advertisements have been the rising ways of accessing to
so-called blue-collar labourers. It also appeared that industrial employment has
taken more registered forms in the last few years, confirmed by the conversations
with workers. Furthermore, I encountered by a large extent strong emphases on
the priority of technical qualifications over social or cultural features in the
recruitment of labourers. Interviewees from leading local firms underlined some
extra recruitment criteria, i.e., having primarily a vocational high school degree so
that they could employ more compatible workforce with the improving
manufacturing technology. Yet, they also admitted that those criteria could be
disregarded at a time when overflow of work is needed.
Firstly, we look for professional skills. Second comes age. And the third is social
situation.
It’s not entirely about coming from the same hometown. I cannot say we’re mostly
hiring these and those. But because it’s our friends who recommend them mostly,
their hometown and familiarity become the preferred reasons (M3).
We seek qualified people. Now, the new heavy-duty regulations require that the
people doing this type of work be graduates from relevant schools or be trained in
this area. This is a legal obligation; otherwise there’s a fine. So, of course, we look
for qualified people. But in Kayseri there is a scarcity in this respect. When things
get very busy, we have to bend this rule and the requirement for a high school or
vocational school diploma (M4).
136
process rather than a conservative contest. This argument is also reinforced by the
fact that there has been increasing number of female workforce employed in
specific stages of labour process which require either elaborateness like sewing in
furniture and textile sector, or simplified labour such as working at assemblage in
the production of metal goods. Yet, marital status was explicitly stated as an
important touchstone of the firms’ recruitment policies.
We would accept unqualified workers, because qualified workers have the audacity
to lecture us. I mean it’s not necessary, what is to be done is clear. We also prefer
the married workers because they tend to be more responsible (M2).
We primarily prefer the married ones or the ones who are about to get married.
Why? They tend to be responsible individuals who would try to protect their jobs.
We even see this during the interviews. They tend to be ambitious and motivated,
and try to provide their families with good living conditions (M4).
We have a recruitment policy that applies to all of our companies: one must have
graduated from at least a high school/vocational high school, have completed the
military service, and be younger than 28. Beside that, being married is a plus. And,
of course, it has its benefits such as being responsible, laying claim to their jobs
and the company, adaptability etc. (M5).
To sum up, local industrial workforce has been mainly composed of the
labourers migrated from rural places in the middle Anatolia mainly as a
consequence of the dissolution of their agricultural economies. They largely
represent unskilled labour with limited education degree of primary or secondary
school. There is also a remarkable number of urban-based industrial workforce
137
mostly as a second generation of the earlier migration flows to the city in the
1970s, representing relatively more skilled labour with vocational education
degree. In addition, some industrial workforce comes from the dissolution of self-
employed artisans or shopkeepers. Out of this proleterianisation process, there
have been two important outcomes impacting on local class relations. The first
one is the lack of enough skilled labour force to be compatible with technological
improvements within local industrial production. Local industrialists often
complain about the number of qualified workforce within local labour market.68
However, only 5 firms among 19 large-scale enterprises are mentioned in the
interviews to give systematic work instruction programme to their workforce
within a working period. This implies that local industrial employers are reluctant
to invest in workforce. This would lead to a vicious circle of low-productivity,
low-wage and high workforce turnover rate. As a matter of fact, all managerial
interviewees also complained about high level of workforce turnover rate that
could be arrived at serious defectiveness in labour process.
68
As a representative person of local industrialists, the chairman of Kayseri Chamber of
Industry touched upon this issue with a particular policy suggestion: “There is a shortage
in qualified labour. Education is a serious thing. There has been serious waste of
resource. There is a scattered structure in vocational education system ranging from
municapalities, chambers, Ministry of Education to Higher Education Council, which has
been spending billions of Turkish liras. Yet, indeed, we have employed the workers.
Instead of transferring resources to those institutions, the state should support firms like
us for giving vocational education to their employess. This would be much more
efficient” (Boydak, 2009:31).
138
We also have some perks; if we didn’t have those we’d be doomed with this wage.
My father sent me away from the village because there was no money in growing
sugar plants. But we keep farming the cropland. My father and uncles continue the
work, and sometimes I go join them to help. They also employ farm workers when
necessary. We have some sort of an income from the village after all. My father
sends me fruits and vegetables, potatoes for winter etc. We’d really be doomed
otherwise. But there are many who do not have anything coming in from the
village. I have no idea how they do it (W34).
In the previous chapter, it was underlined that local industry in Kayseri has
been composed of three main sectors: textile, metal and furniture. Despite a set of
diverse and unreliable data on the number of employment, local industrial
employment is apparently concentrated in the sectors of furniture, metal and
textile, respectively. In this context, it is possible to define local industry as
labour-intensive according to official classification by the Ministry of Industry
(for the classification see Köse and Öncü, 2000). However, those labour intensive
industries become differentiated among them in terms of the level of technologies
and the degree of labour intensiveness. To illustrate, whereas labour process of
metal sector includes some stages of production such as press, casting and enamel
139
coating that involve the use of relatively technological means, that of furniture
sector having with the stages of molding, framing and upholstering requires lesser
technologies in production. On the other hand, leaving aside its further stage of
weaving, textile-yarn production is heavily depended on uncomplicated working
of machines that turns labour into rather an observer of the process.
140
mutual relations and flexible specialisations between small- and medium-sized
firms in the wake of world economic crisis in the 1970s (cf. Piore ve Sabel, 1984).
In this line, some Turkish scholars tend to consider recent local industrialisation
developments like in Kayseri as having similar, if not the same, relations that
would produce similar achievements. Theoretically, in Chapter 2, these
approaches were already criticized for both failing to comprehend wider
destructive consequences of capitalist relations of production such as over
accumulation, uneven development and flows of capital, and ignoring class
tensions under the command of those consequences (cf. Eraydın, 2002) 69 . In
addition, even approached from this perspective, it is highly difficult to consider
the spatial concentration of local industrial production in Kayseri OID to have the
same industrial relations with so-called new industrial districts. First, although
there were similarly many independent small- and medim-sized firms mostly
operating within the direct involvement of their owners in production, the rapid
development of certain big-sized firms in each sector subsequently surpassed
them and became the most powerful actors in local industrial relations. In this
regard, local industrial development in Kayseri has proceeded not through a set of
relatively balanced relations among firms specialising in certain components of
products, but within the attempts by some individual firms to constitute their own
integrated production process. 70 Managerial interviewees from big-sized firms
also confirmed this aspect as follows:
69
For example, one of the prominent Turkish scholars arguing for this approach, while
taking into the research agenda class relations only as labour costs as neoclassical
economics suggests, confines the research entirely to the question of whether or not a
kind of ‘flexible specialisation’ can happen in so-called new industrial regions in Turkey:
“Once the penetration of foreign markets was successful; imaging, design and trend
products started to be improved. Today, the industrial centers of Anatolia are trying to
improve the acceleration that they achieved in the first phase and reach the international
market. After that; if they can move to special products, product diversification and to the
phase of innovation and design; they would be able to become a part of the new
production system that flexible specialization requires as part of the global network of
production. Whether such a transformation will happen or not will be determined by local
entrepreneurs, the local workforce and local people” (Eraydın, 2002:178).
70
A recent comprehensive study on industrial employers in Kayseri arrives at similar
conclusions regarding with the patterns of local industry (see Cengiz, 2013:258-261).
141
Generally speaking, as the companies grew, separate factories have been
built gradually to produce such things constituting the main inputs. 90% of
their production is for our companies, but they also produce for the
market. In HES Kablo the aluminum and copper sections were also built
as a separate factory. We buy the cable sheath and plastic/sleeve from our
conglomerate’s factories (M1).
What then emerged out of these attempts has not been a set of mutual
relations among firms that involves, as it is argued in the literature of new
industrial districts, specialisation and product diversity, but rather an
agglomeration of those firms producing similar consumer goods such as furniture,
metal stuff or textile products within a relatively simplified labour process.
However, within its locally specific structures such agglomeration led to the
creation of an effective social and spatial context that facilitated particular
development in local industrial production. In one of manegerial interviews, this
context was portrayed in a striking manner as follows:
They keep talking about this so-called Kayseri model. What the hell is it? It’s not
an organization or some technological stuff. There’s a tradition of trade in Kayseri
but it’s not enough to support an industry. And besides, there’s real-estate income
because of municipalism. What is gained with this income becomes a weapon in
the hands of entrepreneurs. Plus, there are no hurt feelings because everybody
knows each other. You make a phone call, and then go to Ankara if necessary. Or
the AKP provincial head is a friend of yours. This is the Kayseri model. There’s no
pricing policy, R&D work, shared documents, nor any investment policy. People
just know each other. Let’s say you know Mustafa Elitaş from when you were
neighbors in the industry, or you know the Minister of Energy from when he was
the the directorate of the electrical power administration. This small town culture
existing in a big city is what makes us different. Other than that, there is no
motivation to come together and collaborate financially. Let’s dig and find out how
many aggregate corporations are out there. What’s happened to them? There was
Taksan, Birlik Mensucat, and Çimkur. Where are they now? They were all
aggregate corporations; some of them were founded with the immigrant
remittances. Now they’ve either gone bankrupt or are in the hands of a few
families. Where is the partnership culture now? (M6).
142
Within these informally operating industrial relations, small- and medium-
sized firms continued to proliferate in a number of entrepreneurial strategies
ranging from developing some cooperative relations among employers mainly as
business organisation to attend exhibitions to copying product types from each
other. Nevertheless, as competitive dynamics of market relations accelerated after
the economic crises in 2001 and in 2008, such industrial relations have been
gradually transformed into a set of contract manufacturing hieararchies. In this
process, while leading local industrial firms in each sector have developed
subcontracting relations with international companies, small- and medium-sized
firms have been increasingly compelled to incorporate themselves into those
relations. This tendency has been especially evident in local furniture production
as it is more open to spatial fragmentation in a relatively labour intensive labour
process:
İstikbal has really given us all a vision. It was a family corporation too, but it took
serious steps towards institutionalization. It put aside its family corporation
identity, and has become professional. Now Kayseri follows its lead. Other family
businesses copy it. We’ve also copied it in terms of institutionalization. Now the
conditions require everything to be this way. Just the other day we attended a
seminar held by İstikbal; and of course it is difficult, this is a much smaller
business but we will try to implement a similar change here too (M7).
Before the 2008 crisis we would manufacture furniture with our own brand to the
domestic markets, such as the Karadeniz region. But when the demand became
imbalanced with the crises, and the payments were late, we had to turn completely
to contract manufacturing. Now we make furniture for İstikbal. The profit is lower
but at least the demand is regular. It doesn't pour but still trickles down. Now we’ve
learned how to do smooth business using invoices, even if it’s out of obligation. To
be honest, in the past, we would show the amount in the invoices lower than they
were, or didn’t care about the quality control etc. As you see, it brings some
institutionalization with it (M8).
143
A year or two ago, we started to have some of our cheaper products made in
Bahrain. We were only able to compete with the cheap products of far-eastern
countries in this way. Now we’ve bought this factory in Bahrain and we’re
manufacturing all our cheapest products there (M4).
In the past, the boss would come and tour the factory. We were about 300
employees back then. Most of us were his fellow townsmen. He would come and
stand by the worker. I personally experienced this. He came and showed me how
to do the job, how to use the point machine.
Let me give you an example from our section again. When I was working the
night shift, the payments were overdue by several days. Apparently, our section
got together and decided to go and talk to the boss. Of course the boss got mad
for this seemingly threatening move, as if they were going to beat him up or
something. But they also got their money that day. And of course some of those
who had gone to him were let go a few days later, but that’s another story (W12).
This case reveals that one aspect of such informally operating industrial
relations was the direct concrete relation between employer and employees
blurring the class lines within the paternalist power of the former over the latter at
the workplace. Nevertheless, parallel with the rise of so-called formal and
institutionalised industrial relations in recent years, it seems that such direct
144
relations between employer and employees have disappeared into the quantitative
and performative ones. This is clearly evident in workers’ responses to the
question on their current relations with the employer.
The man’s always concerned with the numbers. Back when the factory was smaller
it wasn’t like this. We were a bit freer, there was a warmer environment. As it
grew, they started doing studies, and measured our work by the minute (W55).
They time you without telling. Let’s say I make my product in 8 minutes. The next
month I make 200 products. Then they say ‘we know your performance, you can
do better’. They’ve increased it more and more, pushing for more all the time
(W20).
They’ve built such a system that assumes that the worker is like a machine. Even
with a machine, you need to cool it when it’s overheated. The worker does not even
get that or any form of motivation. You would even approach your child with
affection, buy a toy, make them happy etc…The factory is like the military.
Everybody has to do their job within a hierarchy. There are the study groups; they
analyse everything, they measure, they make arrangements. Foremen give us
directions accordingly. The guys are conditioned for numbers (W34).
I’m telling you what I see between the boss and the worker. He’s acting like a rival
company, or seeing us as the firm he’s buying the materials from. He says ‘the
cheaper I buy this material, the bigger my profit will be’. And he sees the worker
the same way. ‘The less I pay the worker, the more profit I’ll make’ (W47).
It then seems that the recent transformation in local industry into relatively
formal and institutional relations among firms has proceeded along with, to use
Edward’s (1979) terms, the development of technical-sciencitific control within
labour process imposing systematically competitive market pressures on workers.
In this line, it is apparent that there has been a considerable degree of
crystallisation of class relations in the employer-employee relationships. A clear
reflection of this tendency is the last quotation (W47) revealing that there has
been much more competitive market relation rather than paternalist cooperation in
the employer’s approach to the workforce in recent years. This has also been
associated with the increasing performative discipline over the workers within
labour process. In this framework, it is safe to argue that capital-labour relation
has undergone some essential changes along with the recent development of local
industrial relations towards some formal and institutional lines. The details of
these changes are investigated in the next sections.
145
5.4.2. Working Conditions and Wage-Regime
No. The one responsible for the line was the foreman, we would work for him,
meaning we didn’t have ties to the factory. We worked for 2-3 years like that with
no insurance. Things got bigger, and the factory made a deal with the Italians in
2008. They were going to export to them. When that happened, they insured some
of us. I got insured too. Until then, and I’m not exaggerating, 80% of us were not
insured. But still we’re registered to another company called Kumteks under the
factory.
How’s that?
When they got us insurance the factory owners founded a few companies. For
example Kumteks workers are low in number; about 200, and they’re all unionized.
Most of them were insured in the first place. And then most of us were made
employees of Kumteks. These are high in number. There are about 200 at Kumteks.
146
The unionized ones you mentioned, in which parts do they work?
The ones in the enamelling, dyehouse and press sections are mostly unionized and
are Kumteks employees. Almost all of the ones in the cable room or on the
assembly line like me are Kumteks employees, which means no union.
What is your work pace like? For example, if you had to compare, is there an
increase in the pace of the line you work at, or in the work that you’re doing?
Yes, surely. They take weekly, monthly and yearly readings, and measure which
line did how much work. They always want more to be done. The foremen
especially push hard on this because the more they make the more bonus they get.
They keep pressuring us, saying ‘come on, hurry up’, ‘we’ve done very little’,
‘keep up, otherwise you’ll be fired’, it’s always threatening. Excuse my French, but
they make people race like horses.
And there are also some risks in your work in terms of safety. When you’re doing
your job, is the necessary equipment such as gloves, protective masks or goggles
provided?
That’s terrible too. If your glove’s ripped, they tell you to come bring it so they’ll
see if it’s ripped or not first. You can only get it after asking time after time; you
get weary of going in and asking. They don’t care much about the masks anyway,
and if you ask for it and finally get it, you have to use the same mask all the time.
So you give up.
May I ask how much you’re getting paid under these conditions?
The pay is the minimum wage: 700-something lira. The overtime would be 100-
200 lira that you get under the table. It’s not in your payroll. Together with the
overtime, subsistence allowance and everything, it’s about 850 in total.
We have about 10-12 hours of overtime per week, over 45 hours. Overtime is
mandatory, you cannot say no. If you say you cannot stay the foreman tells you to
do. If you push it too hard you have to pay it in other ways. When you need some
time off, he makes it difficult. Or he treats you badly, threatens to fire you. On the
other hand, you compensate the low pay with the overtime pay to some extent. But
it’s still not worth it. Everybody’s complaining. You want to rest at some point
(W33).
147
What Ali told about working conditions and wages within local industry
were echoed in nearly all of other semi-structured interviews with workers. For
example, many workers told me that they had been employed unregisteredly until
the recent years.71 As for the working conditions, health and work safety became
the most emphasized issue raised by workers. This is especially crucial for metal
workers as they work in highly risky and severe working conditions. In this regard,
they seem to be much concerned with safety in labour process.
We work in the metal shop. We put the plate onto the counter by hand. If it slips,
you get your hand cut. One of our friends had to have his hand cut off. There are
laser-twisting machines here. To make the machine work faster they’ve removed
the lasers. The machine turns itself off now. When our friend was working the
machine went bam! The man’s fingers got cut off from here. One of our close
friends lost his fingers with the shear. There is no work safety. Sometimes we work
by very risky machines. For example people who do pressing are made to work at
the shear or twisters are sent to the shear. You work with the machines you’re not
familiar with, so of course there are accidents (W16).
71
“I did pressing work at Femaş for 2 years, and I had insurance. They did not insure the
ones at the assembly line. Because pressing is dangerous, they would do it right away.
But I had many friends at pressing who did not have insurance. While working at night
shift, one of them lost his four fingers. I mean pressing is tough. They did not let him go,
though; he became a night guard instead (W 51). I never worked without insurance at
Kumtel but I witnessed others doing it. A couple of lines were reserved for contract
manufacturing. When we were at Kumtel, these were insured. But, when it was work for
contract manufacturing, there were kids working at lines; kids who were too young to
even do their military service. Contract manufacturers tell them to make, let’s say, 1000
products, and do whatever they have to do in order to finish it. Then of course they find
people from all over and meet the demand (W49).They started my insurance in 2004; I
had to work without insurance for 9 years. (Is it less common to work without insurance
now?) It is, compared to the past. There is almost no one without insurance in many firms.
But they still suggest not insuring them and offering to pay 100 liras more instead. And
people accept it because they need the money. This wasn’t uncommon” (W21).
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paper. This is apparently revealed in what a managerial interviewee said is
compared with a worker interviewee in the same factory:
Sometimes the foreman brings some papers and just tells us to sign them. He says
it’ll take long to read so just sign it. If you ask what it is or whatnot, he says ‘don’t
you trust us?’ One time I was curious so insisted on asking. They said it’s a
document showing you got training. But they didn’t give us any training (W39).
As for the wages, all the workers in different sectors basically complain
about the employers’ official minimum wage policy. This policy has been so
prevalent within local industry that even the leading local industrial firms pay the
same wages to the workers.
We register them first with the minimum wage. There’s a probation period of 3
months. They become union members after 3 months. And, after a year, they
receive the right to get a bonus. In the successive years, the pay is increased
according to the raise stated in the association agreement (M1).
Our payment system works like this: Workers get minimum wage for starters. After
the work period it is raised according to the association agreement (M4).
We pay minimum wage. Of course, the operators and the foreman are different.
(M11)
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kinds of individual reactions among workers. Interviewing with workers revealed
that an initial reaction appears as a deliberate attempt to reduce individual work
performance to the minimum levels. A seemingly obedient worker, as
conversation turned into a warm and friendly talk, depicted workers’ general
reaction against employer as “working depending on the amount of money” in a
quite striking manner:
He should give 3-5 or 10 or whatever, man, just to keep the worker motivated. He
should pay wages regularly. I don’t know, maybe he should give 10 more lira on
top of the minimum wage the state gives so the guy would come in more motivated
to work. If he gives a little more, the workers really wouldn’t mind the small stuff.
They’d say he cares for the workers. But what he thinks is that if you go away
there’s someone else ready to work. Ahmet goes, Mehmet comes in. The boss says
the same thing. Why? Because, there are too many men. Then what do you do?
You work according to the wage given to you... The man does not give you that
much money. Then why would the worker be into it? Why would I think about this
job day and night then? (W4)
There’s a high turnover… Workers switch jobs for petty reasons. There’s also this
side of the story, honestly. The wages are set in Kayseri. It’s minimum wage. The
worker also knows it, if he has any kind of trouble at work he can go to these
places; he knows that when he quits his job in the morning he gets another one in
the afternoon. Especially during summer months when there’s much demand, the
workers become demanding. Even if they don’t have social rights like they do in
our factory, they go to another place. They get cross with the foreman or with a
friend and they’re gone. He says he cannot smoke in the factory so he leaves. They
cannot take the discipline at the big factories (M12).
We have a problem of high turnover. We try to compensate for the loss through
overtime. The turnover affects the quality. I can say that this is our biggest problem
(M13).
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Furthermore, it seems that a more radical reaction to the working conditions
and wage regime in local industry appears as a resistance to be an industrial
worker. Having witnessed many job advertisements on the walls of factories
during the first stage of field work in Kayseri OID, I sarcastically asked industrial
managers that “it seems there is no unemployment problem in Kayseri, does it?”
They all replied that it is not an unemployment problem but being overcritical by
workers about the jobs in local industry. A manager from the leading local metal-
cable factory was complaining about labourers as follows:
We’re having a difficult time procuring employees. You see, there is a UMEM
Project that the government is supporting, it pays the wages for about 3 months,
provides their insurance. But they cannot get employees. For example, we wanted
to hire about 200 people within this UMEM Project. We announced the project,
and asked for 100 people. It turns out 50 people applied. We want them to be a bit
qualified for the carpet factory, but we cannot find them. We cannot find them by
asking for different conditions. For example, we want them to be high school
graduates, younger than 28. But then, there are no applicants. We bend these
conditions but there are still very few applicants (M1).
The fact is that the workers are made to work for very little pay. That’s why the
worker does not want to work. The factory is looking for a worker, but the worker
does not work for that much in Kayseri. It may be more appealing to work in the
construction sector. He can work for 60-70 lira per day for about 7-8 months and
then he is able to go back to his village for the winter. And the village kids are
tough enough for construction. Right now we cannot find workers, and the workers
do not like the job.
How come? Isn’t there unemployment in Kayseri? Aren’t the workers looking for
work?
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Thus, it is apparent that poor working conditions and minimum wage policy
in local industry of Kayseri have led labourers to involve various kinds of
reactions ranging from the minimum performance in production process and non-
loyal attitudes towards workplaces to the distinct survival strategies other than
being employed in local industry. More importantly, although those reactions
have been at the individual level, their cumulative consequences came to the point
where industrial employers have strongly felt labour problem within its different
moments i.e. labour market, workplace and reproduction spheres. In the interview
with the general director of Kayseri OID, this problem was also pointed out with a
highly controversial solution:
In Kayseri I’ve seen many job ads for qualified and unqualified workers. What’s
the unemployment situation?
Why do you think this is the case? Don’t these people need to work?
Of course they do, they have a family to feed. You know, it’s the same all over
Turkey, but especially in Kayseri the concept of a family is very important. It’s
common that one member of the family works and the others are fed. It’s not like
in Europe where you have to work once you’re eighteen. Here, if there’s
someone without a job, someone in the family will give them money. It’s the
family way here. That’s why they’re not in a bad position if they’re out of work.
They get support from the family somehow. So there’s this aversion to work.
They manage one way or another.
Of course it does. To be honest, what some of the employers say is this: “We
wish they would build workers’ shelters like the ones in Manhaim back in the
day so that we could bring workers here from other cities.” They say that they
wish they [the workers] would stay in those bachelor’s pads so they could meet
their needs (C1).
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analysis of these difficulties in detail by focussing on both the employers’
strategies to cope with them and the workers’ responses at the production and
workplace level.
153
furniture-bed companies hinted at this fact when he was comparing his workplace
with its counterpart in local industry in terms of the management procedures.
It is indeed that the above factory has some differentiated aspects in the
management procedures within the local industry. For example, unionisation in
this factory dates back to the early years of the 1990s when there was no trade
union organised in furniture sector within the local industry. In comparison, it
seems to be less concerned with the religious values and practices that are widely
mentioned to be included into industrial relations in order to cover class tensions.
Despite such remarkable differences, the company involves no shift in the wage-
regime that is dominant in the local industry.
It’s higher here, I mean our white-collar employees get paid better in Kayseri.
For the blue-collar ones it’s minimum wage because they’re registered of course.
We cannot go below that because it’s our legal obligation (M9).
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However, this does not mean that those companies established or rapidly
grown after the 1990s have not involved in the so-called modern management
techniques. Interviewing with a manager from the leading local industrial
company, which is proudly mentioned as having the melding of traditional family
relations and universal business culture, shows that so-called modern management
policies became incorporated into those companies at a certain level of
development.
155
because unrest grows easily when the factory grows. For instance, we developed
compensation policies that would motivate workers and make them more
competitive. We’ve built scales of payment: A, B, and C. After a two-month
probation period we decide whether the worker will become A, B or C. We
reassess everyone’s position in the payment scale after every year. A is minimum
wage; B is A + 100 TL; and C is A + 200 TL (M13).
The last case indeed reveals that management procedures and techniques
on workers are selectively developed on the nature of technical division of labour,
primarily taking into consideration workers’ efficiency and their potential
reactions. It would then be misleading to consider those procedures and
techniques as modern vs. traditional; rather, they should be analysed in their
actual complex forms that are selectively constituted by employers in the pursuit
of increasing efficiency and class power within workplace-level relations. Given
the actual limits to receive these forms from the managers, I will try to find out
them from the semi-structured interwiews with workers in the next section.
When asked about the management policies at labour process, all of the
workers initially spoke of not employers or managers but journeymen (ustabaşı).
This is indeed not surprising when what worker Ali above told about the
journeymen as “informal contractor” that had unregisteredly employed workers in
collaboration with industrial employer, is kept in mind. Although they have no
longer such an autonomous position at the workplaces, it is understood that
journeymen are still given some distinct roles in the management of labour at so-
called modern factories. A worker who has long worked at some major local
industrial firms summarized his experiences with journeymen as follows: “I have
been working since 2001 but have never seen a journeyman protecting workers”.
He subsequently added that “There was a special thing when I was working in the
factory. The journeymen were getting bonus. For example, the quota determined
by employer is 700 at the assemblage. If the workers at this assemblage produce
more than 700, the employer gives a bonus yet only to the journeymen. Thus, no
bonus given to workers” (W49). Similarly, another worker employed at a big-
sized textile-yarning factory point to increasing work pressure and disciplinary
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attitudes by journeymen on workers in order to receive bonus from employers:
“journeymen gets the bonus, that’s why they don’t give any breaks and they are
pushing us all the time. They impose the workload of 30 workers to 10 to 15
workers” (W2). It can then be argued that whereas workplaces have increasingly
become modernised in many respects, journeymen are still considered to carry out
not just a controlling role within labour process but also direct disciplinary
function on workers. This argument finds many evidence in workers’ statements
about journeymen at work.
The factory is like the military. Everyone has to do their job within a hierarchy.
We have a foreman who pretends he’s doing all the good work and blames the
workers for the bad work. So arguing with each other separates us. But the
superiors are always better off. One of my friends became the foreman’s assistant,
and we got cross with each other. I couldn’t deal with it and quit. You’re at a loss
as to whom to support (W34). Because I’m a former foreman my pay is good. I
would get paid 1400 lira four years ago. Now they’ve moved me from that
position, but my salary is still the same. I started to speak about the workers
problems a bit, and got cross with the boss. On top of that, the supervisor that he
brought put a lot of pressure on the workers, and we got into an argument. So the
boss removed me from the foremanship position but did not decrease my salary
although I didn’t get a raise for four years (W55).
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workers become partially weakened. When it comes to metal sector, journeymen’
attitudes seem to have remarkable changes according to different stages of labour
process. While workers employed at simple, repetitive and uncomplicated parts of
the labour process like assemblage are exposed to intensified disciplinary
practices by journeymen, others working at the stages of press, casting or enamel
coating which involve qualified and experienced workforce encounter less
disciplinary attitudes by journeymen, according to semi-structured interviews with
metal workers.
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sometimes. If he gets something, he wants his employees to get something too;
that’s the kind of person he is (W1).
We don’t have any problems with the foreman, or with the bosses for that matter.
We can just show up at their office if we need to. We have many bosses but we
can see them easily. They help during Ramadan, give away food etc. They help
with things at weddings. If a couch costs 2 thousand TL, for example, they’re
willing to pay the half (W13).
The foreman comes and asks if we should stay to do work overtime because the
work is kind of urgent. If he comes in and tells us that we have to overstay, we
won’t do it. But he’s just asking. Maybe I’m tired or have thingsto do, but when
he asks nicely like that, we stay… I’ve never thought of working in another
sector. Why haven’t I? Because I didn’t know anyone anywhere else, but I have
my uncle here, I feel secure… I was at Istikbal but didn’t stay there because their
hours are very difficult. My brother-in-law works there. They say it’s a nice place
but they time everything. You don’t overwork yourself here; whatever you can
make is fine. And that’s why you want to give them more; but they require a
specific amount there, it’s mass production (W14).
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provide the essential values of cooperation, obedience and motivation for workers
at work.
The employers from Kayseri make themselves look like excellent Muslims. They
abuse it though. I’m not saying all of them do but I haven’t seen anyone who
doesn’t. For example, there’s a type of lawsuit called “treason against the
workplace”. They instill it in you when you’re little: you shall not betray your
bread and butter. I’m not betraying, man. But this has really happened before.
The foremen came in, the men of the boss, and the managers came in and said
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this is betrayal; this is not in our religion. But does the religion really say this?
(W16).
They scream and yell at the guys who go to pray. They tell them to do their five-
time-prayers at home. Even performing religious duties is forbidden. I mean they
don’t say it to their faces but still… (W2)
The boss wants them to do the prayer later. There are some very conservative ones;
we cover up for them. I mean I understand the employer’s position too. If we have
to finish the production by 4 o’clock for the delivery, let’s say, the boss gets the
penalty when people go off to pray. The employer is right (W31).
The foremen used to pressure the workers to go and comeback. They would tell
them to make up later for the times they missed praying. However, upon some
complaints, on one Friday Hacı Boydak came up and said that from now on no one
shall be refrained from performing the prayer. After that, the pressure was less
severe. There are, of course, some others who go to pray and don’t show up for half
an hour or 45 minutes. When this happens, I start to be suspicious and jokingly ask
if they’re doing any make-up prayer too. Such things happen as well. For example,
the worker does not perform ablution when he’s got free time, and does it when he
goes to pray. That takes about half an hour. The Friday prayer always takes 10
minutes longer, and they calculate even that time difference. That’s the sole reason
why they’ve reduced the lunch break from one hour to 45 minutes (W34).
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People perform the prayer, of course. There are places where they put pressure on
the workers but our firm isn’t one of them. If you go and do it quickly, and there’s
no delay in your work, that’s no problem. There’s a guy working beside me who
always performs his ablution during lunch break and then goes off to prayer (W4).
It’s difficult to do it five times a day. We go to the Friday prayer collectively. They
used to drive us on a shuttle bus to go to the central mosque, but about a year ago
they built a prayer room (mescid) inside the factory because it would take too long
to get together with the commute and everything. Now they’re saving 20 minutes
compared to the past (W12).
The thing about the regular and Friday prayers is… It’s a problem for whoever is
on shift. For instance, a person who is on the 7-3 (7:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.) shift
cannot leave for the Friday prayer. It’s because the lunch break is around 11, and
you get about half an hour. The call to prayer starts at 12:50. If you leave for the
prayer you’ll come back at 1:30 p.m. Then it becomes a problem. There is no other
person to substitute for you. The work cannot stop. You cannot stop an operating
machine (W50).
Thus, it is clearly shown in the interviews that “time-out for praying”, which
developed as highly legitimate demand at workplace where employer exerted
certain religious discource on employees in order to get their consent, is no longer
seen as acceptable and tolerable as it was. Furthermore, this is not limited to big-
sized workplaces at which labour process is organised within a serial production
and intensified work discipline; workers at small and medium sized workplaces
are also facing difficulties in breaking work for praying as those workplaces
became a part of wider hierarchies of production and work discipline. Such an
apparent refusal to workers’ demand for “time-out for praying” at workplace is
likely to undermine the cultural hegemony within the employer-employee
relationship that was mainly built in reference with religious discourses. It is
because of this danger that local employer avoids a formally-declared prohibition
on religious practices during working hours, deliberately leaving workers in
ambiguity to whom to blame for the restrictions they face. The question of
whether or not this ambiguity serves to help employer continue such cultural
hegemony over workers is worth investigating further in the next sections.
However, it is here safe to conclude that the disciplinary aspects of labour process
have increasingly dominated workplace-level relations within the local industry.
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In the scope of so-called cultural hegemony within the employer-employee
relationship, there is also another form of social relation, that is being from the
same village/town or ethnic community, which is effectively used in the
management of labour. This is particularly referred in a number of critical studies
on rapid industrialisation process that has taken place in Anatolian towns (see
Bedirhanoglu-Yalman, 2009a; Özugurlu, 2005). In this respect, local industry in
Kayseri provides no exception. As the revival of local industry coincided with the
emergence of industrialists from a local town called Hacılar, so the industrial
workforce was initially supplied via acquaintanceship from the same town,
especially given the context that local people of Kayseri were reluctant to work in
industry (Cengiz, 2012). This form of recruitment was subsequently found
functional in that it provided employer with a set of social ties with workers that
can be manipulated in many ways to execute interclass consensus at workplace.
Although such recruitment has lost its predominance as local industry
spectacularly expanded along with massive flows of migration at a wider scale,
there are still some cases in which the employer recruited its workforce
particularly from the town and/or ethnic-cultural community to which s/he
belongs. One of them is examplary of the employer’s labour control strategies in
and through such recruitment policy. In that case, which took place at a big-sized
metal factory (employing 800 worker), employer particularly preferred to employ
labourers from his ethnic community (the people of Circussian) to such a degree
that he has direct ethnic-community ties with nearly half of his workforce. Despite
the worsening working conditions, the management has controlled the emergent
class tensions in distinct ways using such ties as a means of social pressure over
them at various scales ranging from individual to ethnic-community level. This
management strategy was seen more explicitly when workers attempted to get
unionised in a collective class response to everlasting workplace-level relations:
“As we got unionised, our boss made a complaint to the Circussian Association
and also reported us to the local newspapers. He claimed that we put the factory in
danger and betrayed the Circussian community” (W, 12). Nevertheless, it can be
argued that as workers experience such labour control strategy within the context
of increasing class tension, they become less open to its manipulative power over
163
themselves. Workers can even turn into ones developing counter arguments
regarding with the manipulation by the management of those ethnic-community
ties, as the worker above continues to tell: “We heard this kind of words several
times: protect the workplace that feeds you; when a Circussion employer wins,
you all going to win. Well, he doesn’t remember I am also from the Circussion
community when I have worked in poor conditions with low payment; but he
thinks that I betrayed the community when I got unionised. I think, it is indeed
him who betrayed the community” (W 12).
In this labour control strategy, employers generally launch more than one
company at the same workplace and break workforce into fragments that are
employed in each company in more managable manners. This labour management
policy is closely related with what a worker Ali in the beginning of previous
section told about his workplace. His employer set up three companies with
which labourers were to be contracted under different employment forms such as
subcontracted worker, parent-company worker and unionised worker. The aim of
the setting up of these companies within the same workplace is to adapt existing
labour control policies for a new context of workplace-level relations. In this
context, informal employment becomes undesirable as local industrial firms are
required to show international companies their eligibility for subcontracting
production. In another case, which was revealed by a worker-interviewee
employed at a big-sized metal factory, the introduction of new companies at the
same workplace was directly motivated to stop worker’s challenging attempt for
unionisation.
When the factory reopened after the crisis, we got back in touch with the union
Özçelik-İş. They heard about this in the factory, so the managers formed a strategy
as putting their workplace power against our power. They would stop at nothing to
stop the union from returning to the factory. We worked like this until November
2003. Right when the union was about to start [to work], we were told to resign so
they would put us all in different companies...then they started 3-4 different
companies under the same firm. The workers were spread to different companies.
This was done in order to stop the union, and it’s still going on. And there’s also a
cleaning company (W15).
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This type of extra-ordinary labour control via the setting up of multiple
company bodies is specifically found in the rapidly growing firms of metal
industry. There is no similar labour control policy reported in the interviews made
with workers from other industrial sectors. Such differantiation in metal sector
seems to be rooted in its specificities of labour process that involve relatively
considerable degree of duality regarding with the qualification of labour between
different stages of production while also requiring to have spatial unity among
them at the same workplace. Therefore, a better labour control for rapidly-
growing big-seized firms in metal industry appear to divide workforce within a
multiple company structure, thereby confining workers into different legal-
institutional forms in which to treat them with different management strategies. At
the same workplace, it is then possible to see that workers’ demand for
unionisation became tolerated within certain sections of production while being
strictly opposed at other sections like assemblage where labourers are also
employed within a different company contract and/or status.
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regular wage increase. It is indeed the existence of such a high degree of non-
unionised workers that allowed local employers to keep the wages low without
encountering workers’ collective contest in the increasing competitive context of
neoliberal era, thereby giving rise to industrial capital accumulation at a level that
made the way for rapid local industrial development in the 1990s. This
spectacular industrial development, though still being characterized with a low
degree of uninonisation, has witnessed since the late 1990s the rise of a set of
labour unions in some rapidly grown big-sized workplaces. In this context, the
unions of Öz-İplik İş and Çelik-İş belonging to the national confederation of Hak-
İş, which is in line with the movement of political Islam, emerged as two major
labour organisations respectively in the sectors of textile and metal production.
These labour unions got ahead of the long-year labour unions, Teksif and Türk-
Metal, within local industry in a short time. Furthermore, local branch of the
union of Öz-Ağaç İş from the confederation of Hak-İş was launched in this period
to be the single labour organisation for thousands of workers employed in
furniture production. Thus, a remarkable number of workers have been unionised
despite a local industrial context where low-paid, casual and non-unionised work
constitutes the dominant employment form.
72
To illustrate, in 1993 a large section of workers employed at the two big textile
companies of local industry, Atlas Halı and Orta Anadolu, collectively attempted to
change their registered union as a reaction to its cooperative relations with employers; in
1996, a group of workers from a textile company, Saygın Tekstil, initiated a rebel against
their union leaders by blaming them for selling out workers in association with the
employer; in 1997, thousands of workers from the biggest local textile company, Birlik
Mensucat, went to strike for three months; and in 2000, workers employed at a big sized
furniture factory, Poli, attempted to get unionised in an independent way from their
employer.
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with the employers’ concern to contain labour struggles in particular ways that
keep them under control. As a matter of fact, the workers interviewed who also
experienced unionisation processes at that time pointed to the entry of labour
unions into the workplace as a collaborative attempt with the employer to disperse
some radical initiatives developed among workers from below.
The situation with the union went like this: In 1999 the ones who wanted the union
collected signatures. In response to that, the boss gathered the union, but first they
let the union vanguards go. Then the union was like the boss. Whatever the boss
would say, the union complied (W36).
We were union members first, members of Öziplik-İş. When the company grew
and the factories got separated though, there appeared various lines of work. Thus
we were off the thread work. We had a movement to bring the union we wanted by
collecting signatures. Then everything got super tense. Nobody would dare to move.
If you said something, they’d fire you. Then, at that time, the other union, ÖzAğaç-
iş was brought in. The notary was also brought to the factory and they made people
give their signatures after lunch. You need to have the balls not to sign it; of course
we signed it (W34).
Let me put it this way: There used to be workers who would stand up to them, the
workers who had support from their family and so didn’t need the money. Those
ones pushed the union. However, all of them were eliminated by being sent out to
other factories or fired. The ones that remained were silenced, and intimidated
(W47).
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promise called moderate unionism, labour unions are still unwelcome in local
industry until they are imposed on local employers as a technical and social
requirement to manage the relations with labourers. Such unionisation has
emerged in particular ways that can be defined as “relational necessity” within the
employer-employee relationship rather than an automatic outcome of a certain
level of industrial development. This is clearly seen in a unionisation experience
at the second largest furniture company in local industry, which a managerial
union representative interviewed from Öz-Ağaç İş told me in detail.
I heard that workers in this company had a long history of becoming unionized.
In the past workers in this company first became members of Öz-İplik İş that was
here in place of us by proxy. Apparently when the boss found out that the workers
were going to the union, he was offended, and said ‘are you not happy with me that
you’re going to the union?’ When the union was only there by proxy they didn’t
get organized, so everything calmed down in a way. When we started working here
we wanted to become reorganized in 2005. Of course we needed a spark to get the
workers going again. And that happened when the employer gave out food in little
packages as if it was some sort of charity. The workers took this as an insult and
started to become union members. This happened in 2008, and after that we were
organized at İpek.
We got the authorization, but in the meantime the employer made workers resign
by intimidating them. When we were doing the work for collective labor
agreements we were left only about 60 people out of the hundreds of people
working there. The boss did not want to negotiate with us and appealed the
arbitration. Meanwhile, a voting for strike took place, but we did not want to go on
strike, and they appealed to the arbiter. Then the boss of İpek had to acknowledge
the union somehow.
We held various meetings to break the ice with the employer. We said that we’re
not enemies; we do not wish to go out of business. We want the employer to win
but workers to be given their due as well. We told them that that was our goal. So
they said okay, and we made an agreement. We did not have any bonus before that,
but we got our bonus. Nevertheless, this agreement is far behind the ones we made
with other factories (C2).
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literature as yellow-unions do. As workers’ representative body in a negotiation
with employers on workplace-level relations, labour unions need to produce a
minimum degree of legitimacy on the part of the former even if they actually seek
to carry out so-called moderate unionism in cooperation with the latter. The Hak-
İş-affiliated labour union branches claimed to have such legitimacy through a
limited degree of progress in wages and working conditions articulated with a
discource of religious brotherhood covering up class differences between
employer and employees.
The situation is Kayseri goes like this: The previous generation of employers came
from being workers as well, so they knew what it meant to be broke. Even if they
forgot about it, sometimes they would remember. We got along better with them;
we could negotiate more easily. Now we’re having a difficult time with the second
and the third generation because they do not know the meaning of poverty. No
matter how much I try to explain to them how difficult it is to live on minimum
wage, they just pretend to listen but do not understand. They haven’t got a clue in
the world about what kind of difficulties the workers have to go through, but their
fathers were not like this (C3).
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Turk-İş affiliated unions) to get union representatives at workplace directly
through assignment rather than using ballot box, although the legal procedure
brought along with the military coup of 1980 can not totally ban the election
option. As for the latter, they have a process carried out by a limited number of
union representatives in closed-door meetings with the management without
informing workers about the situation. On these two critical issues, they do not
provide any remarkable difference with the Türk-İş affiliated unions that are
associated with authoritarian and centralist union practices. What makes
difference seem to be the role that they assign themselves of convincing
employees to work without dispute in a respect for employers.
It’s not like we’re absolutely advocating for election because we do not believe that
representatives who would be helpful to the workers will come with elections. The
workers do not heavily demand it either; I believe that the workers are content with
90-95% of the representatives we pick. There could well be an election as well but
these things cannot just happen with a flash of excitement. The representatives can
also do more harm to the workers than help sometimes. There is no schooling for
this, after all. I don’t mean to offend anyone but there are some workers who
cannot even write their names…besides, an election creates tension and conflict
between workers. Sometimes we are not quite able to fully explain the collective
labor agreements to them, and then we get criticism. For instance, during the crisis
nobody got a raise because the employers could not see what was ahead. When that
period was over though there was growth. It’s because the small businesses
naturally shut down during the crisis so their work has been left to the bigger
businesses allowing them to expand. After the crisis was over the businesses were
again able to see what was ahead of them so they grew by about 10-15%. But you
cannot make the worker understand this. For instance, they hear that some
company bought an airplane and start complaining that they didn’t get a raise even
though the company was able to buy the plane. But, you know, the guy has trouble
thinking on a wider scale. Maybe he’ll need to go to Europe in a rush, he’ll need
the plane. I know them from our one-on-one meetings, they’re not greedy people.
They’ve gotten over the whole ‘becoming rich’ thing. What they care about now is
their name, being a Turkish brand; they think about how they employ 15000 people
and it means responsibility. Not a lot of people see it now; sometimes they lose
sleep over the possibility of having to let people go. Once, I witnessed an employer
becoming overemotional and saying, almost crying: I’ve been a businessman for 40
years. If I shut down the factory today, I’ll make profit out of it but I’ve put in so
much effort for these people. These people count on me. I have a responsibility
even to provide milk for their kids; I’m losing my sleep over this. You see, some
employers take this responsibility; they have a greater sense of responsibility than
money. This goes unseen but it needs to be addressed. As a union we need to better
explain this to the workers, this is our responsibility (C4).
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The main way of this role has been through the use of religious brotherhood
relations within labour unions and their practices. It is widely said that employers
directly involve union elections by making some collaboration with religious
communities. Correspondingly, these religious communities become influential
actors not just in the recruitment but also in the management of labour by
mobilizing their community ties in favour of employers. Thus, class tensions
within workplace level relations can be absorbed into wider religious
communities organised in hierarchical forms with sacred references over their
members. In the case of a metal worker, who declared himself, at the end of a
warm and friendly talk, as a member of a religious community called Nakşibendi,
such intertwined relations between employer, labour union and religious
community seem to work in a harmonious way:
Are you happy with it? With the collective labor agreements that the union makes,
and the other things?
I am happy. I mean they do solve the problems eventually even with some delay.
How do they make the collective agreements? Do they ask you about it? Are you
happy with the results?
The union does it by itself but we have representatives in it. They discuss, and the
union leaders see the bosses. When there’s a result they let us know.
Do you think they fulfill your demands, or get what you deserve?
There are shortcomings but we talk about them in other places without any
brawling and it gets done eventually. Even if it’s a bit slow, it does get done (W,
50).
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influence. Relatedly, unions’ manipulative power embedded in such religious
community relations becomes unsatisfactory in the eyes of many workers as class
contradictions shape workplace-level relations by worsening workers’ material
conditions. The evidence of this second point is the prevailing critique among
workers (both unionised and non-unionised) against the notion of “charitable
employer” referring in religious terms to his altruistic practices outside workplace
such as building mosque or school and aiding to poor. For workers, the real
material conditions become more important in their relations with the employer
than his charity activities outside the workplace. They have been so reactive
against so-called charitable employers that a union representative admitted that
unions had to give up such religiously inspired propogation.
The workers get worked up most about this charity thing. We no longer respect
such things either. Charity has become the politics, the demagoguery of this
business. The workers do not care about the schools or mosques; they think they’re
not getting what they’re entitled to. We think this way because we’re not employers.
If we were employers too, God forbid, would we become that way too? Such things
happen in Kayseri, we hear them from Konya as well. I mean, there is a sense of
advertisement/promotion (C3).
As a union, we have made agreements with private hospitals, driving schools, and
grocery stores. For example, for the workers who cannot go to Istanbul or Antalya
for vacation, we’ve made a deal with the hotels here at Kozaklı thermal springs,
and reduced the price from 80TL to 43 TL. Maybe they don’t get to see Antalya,
but they see the hot springs. We couldn’t get enough of a raise for the salary but
we’re at least trying to decrease his vacation expenses. We make deals with
shopping spots, so that helps them. We also made a deal with the driving school so
172
they could benefit from it. In the end, we got a raise of 100 liras but we also help
them save 100-150 liras like this, so that makes 250-300 liras. Whatever the worker
does not have to spend, we see as a raise. We’ve made deals with private hospitals
so they do not charge the workers the bed fee. We’ve also made deals with the
stationary shops (a kind of school supplies store in Turkey), they give them
discounts so the school expenses are less now. We get to contribute in these ways
too (C4).
Leaving aside the real impacts of those special contracts by trade unions on
workers’ material conditions, it is safe to argue that the search for complementing
low-wages through such ways without disturbing existing workplace-level
relations shows not only the collaborative nature of those unions with employers
but also the rising importance of material satisfaction within the relations between
unions and workers. To the extent that those unions are not able to provide
workers with the material satisfaction, the latter increasingly see the former as
standing for authoriatian and centralist impositions in line with the management.
For workers, this situation has actually meant a clear disenchantment with those
unions that rapidly developed within the local industry. To put it differently, such
yellow unions that have indeed played within local industrial relations as the most
effective labour control no longer appeal to workers in the ways they have done
so far.
Does this cleaveage between workers and those unions involve the
development of class tensions within local industrial relations in more explicit
ways? The answer to this question cannot be given properly by limiting analysis
to the workplace-level relations, not just because workers’ survival and their
material satisfaction are determined within social and spatial relations operating at
wider contexts but also due to the fact that industrial relations tend to become
over time depended on social division of labour that is taking place at wider scales
beyond workplace-level relations. Therefore, there is a need to move the analysis
towards social reproduction process particulary at urban scale where the above
dynamics develop to a large extent. In the remainder of this chapter, I will
investigate the crucial dynamics of social reproduction process within the city of
Kayseri in terms of class relations.
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5.5. (Urban) Social Reproduction Process
For a long time the city of Kayseri has been associated with trading
activities as well as the abundance of people with so-called trading mentality. As
mentioned in the previous section, trading between different regions and cities
have historically become the main source of income in Kayseri mainly due to the
lack of fertile land for agriculture in the areas surrounding the city. Within such a
context, some local people sought to pursue the trading opportunities brought
along with the development of domestic market particulary in the post-war period
to such a degree that they overflowed into big cities as Kayserian traders. They
achieved such a widespread reputation that certain features related with trade such
as enterpreneurship, timeserving and practicality has been matched with being
Kayserian. Correspondingly, it is widely argued that the rise of local industry in
recent decades has been an outcome of the using by local individuals of such
trading mentality in a specific way for industrial production. This way is generally
dubbed as “Kayseri model” according to which cooperation rather than conflict is
the key for local industrial relations not just among those individuals but also
between them and local institutions. Such discourse for industrial development is
so prevailing that a researcher is to be given many examples of those cooperative
relations in interviews with local industrialists or representatives of major local
institutions. Yet, theoretical and ampirical considerations, so far, reveal much
more the determining role of contradictory class relations operating at different
levels than so-called cooperative trading mentality or “Kayseri model” in local
industrial development. However, to the extent that having a remarkable impact
on urban social reproduction process, such mentality or model, which can be
summed up as local business culture, may be taken to represent certain aspects of
class relations. In this sense it involves class contradictions, thereby having an
explanatory power in the development of industrial relations. Thus, I below
approach to local business culture as a part of class relations and use it in order to
reveal class tensions within the industrial development.
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In the section (5.3.1) where I discussed interfirm relations, a managerial
interviewee’s genuine and critical assessment on local industry was quoted
extensively. In a nutshell, he considers local industrial development as arisen
uniquely from some undesigned relations among individuals who have already
known each other and have particular abilities stemming from the tradition of
trading to combine emergent economic possibilities at the national level with
distinct advantageous of the city. However, he added, what has been achieved so
far in this way is most likely to disappear unless a particular industrial
organisation based on planning and creativity is developed (see section 5.3.1).
These two points indeed provide crucial hints of both the background and the
current situation of local industry. The first point refers to the prevalence of some
informal coordination mechanisms among local employers having with strong
pragmatic and practical tendencies. Indeed, there were many ‘success’ stories in
which employers’ pragmatism and practicality played important roles especially
in the beginning years of the rise of local industry. Within a distinct local culture
of “sitting” (“oturma”) bringing men together to talk about their daily practices
along with a religious content, local employers have got also a comprehensive
network through which to develop mutual relations in business. Although it is
difficult to state the degree to which such informal coordination has shaped the
local industrial development, much work on local economy and politics give a
specific emphasize on the culture of “sitting” within this process (Doğan, 2006;
Çakıroğlu, 2008; Danış, 2012; Cengiz, 2012). I also encountered similar
emphasizes by many interviewees except for workers. To illustrate, a deputy
general secretary of the Middle Anatolian Development Agency, a newly
established state institution centred in Kayseri and entitled to coordinate
developmental policies at sub-national regional scale covering also the cities of
Sivas and Yozgat, classified this distinct culture as the strengths opposed to the
weaknesses of the local industry.
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together and make joint resolutions for Kayseri. The peculiar tradition of house
gatherings has a great impact on this matter. The level of coming together for
Kayseri’s interests is higher than other cities. Thus it has a positive impact on
Kayseri’s development (C5).
These local informal networks are included into the relations not only
among employers but also between them and the state institutions, dubbed as
“Kayseri model”. This model is proudly claimed as a distinct way of problem
solving in the city of Kayseri. At the heart of this model has been the Greater
Municipality of Kayseri, the mayor in particular. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, the Greater Municipality of Kayseri has been ruled by political parties
from political Islamist tradition since 1994. During this process, there have been
two important developments with regard to local politics and economy. Initially,
the Islamist party’s local power, built on the coalition between a town-centred
religious community called Camii Kebir and the rising new industrial capital, led
to a tension within local politics with the traditional centrist local bourgeoisie.
This tension exploded itself as an objection by the former to the big scale local
developmental projects such as the establishment of Free Zone Industrial District
and Yamula Damn Project that were enthusiastically supported by the centrist
local bourgeoisie. However, it did not last long and eventually disappeared as
some projects were completely abandoned and others were left to the rule of the
Islamist municipal power. Both the rise of Islamist party as a coalition partner of
the national political power (1995-97) and the transformation of political Islamist
tradition along neoliberal lines after the so-called post-modern military
intervention (28th of February in 1997) paved the ways for solving this tension
within local politics. As a second important development in the process of
Islamist party’s local power, Mehmet Özhaseki, coming from local commercial
bourgeoisie with a more pragmatic discource, was elected as the new mayor in
place of Şükrü Karatepe, who had been unseated by the central government due to
his conflictual Islamic arguments leading him eventually to be under arrest in this
turbulent political context. Indeed, the new mayor has played a distinct role in
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consolidating local coalition among different sections of bourgeoisie in the
Greater Municipality of Kayseri.73
In Kayseri there’s the structure of one-in-five: the Mayor, the Governor, Chamber
of Commerce President, Chamber of Industry President, and Head of Exchange.
They’ll all bound together. If it’s about Kayseri, nothing else matters. The
metropolitan municipal mayor of Kayseri, Mr Özhaseki, is a very important figure.
He’s part of the local gentry. He knows Kayseri very well, and has been in the
municipality administration for years. He was the district’s president in 1994, and
not long after he became the metropolitan municipal mayor. He’s been the mayor
for the past four terms. Now people get together under the leadership of Mr
Özhaseki, and make decisions about what the Chamber of Commerce or Chamber
of Industry shall do, and everyone agrees to them. It is an invisible organization, so
to speak. There are no objections or arguments really. When it’s about Kayseri no
one wants to pose an obstacle. We have different views of the world, but we work
together when it comes to Kayseri (C6).
To the extent that the Greater Municipality of Kayseri, and particularly the
mayor, has appeared as the most influential authority along with a restricted
number of actors in local decision-making process, it is likely to emerge an
increasing degree of dissatisfaction among wider circles including employers out
of this process. As a matter of fact, in an interview made with him, Özhaseki
73
In an interview, Mehmet Özhaseki, the mayor of Greater Municipality of Kayseri
introduced himself and his municipal policy as follows: “… I’ve received the culture of
Camii Kebir artisans, after all. We must see the propriety and moral side of the matter.
We grew up learning that you should not deceive the customer, you should give trust, act
right, and should never lie when it comes to money; we grew up with this Ahi culture.
We also got to learn how to treat the customer, how to sell products, how to profit when
selling, how to get products cheap, and all of that by practicing and getting hands-on
experience in the market. Thank God I’m coming from the private sector too. I tried to
put the logic of private sector into practice as soon as I started to work at the
municipality… I’ve always gotten the big projects done by utilizing my practicality from
Kayseri. (2011:446-7).
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admitted that he encountered some critiques about non-inclusive aspects of local
decisions.74 I also heard similar comments by some employers, representatives of
civil society and residents. Nevertheless, those critiques remain being expressed at
the individual level without taking any collective form challenging to the existing
local coalition. Besides their weak organisational capacity, this indeed reveals the
strong dominance over urban social relations of the above local coalition with the
leadership of the mayor.
74
“Sometimes people say, just so they can criticize him, that Özhaseki makes all the
decisions with his friends and rules the city with them. Of course, I listen to my friends at
the sittings. I also go to the sittings in Kayseri and attend forty or fifty of them. I value the
ideas that come out of them, that’s something else” (Birol, 2011:447).
178
of Commerce and Industry) and representatives of voluntary institutions. Its main
policies are both to define medium- and long-term targets for economic
development and to provide firms with financial support in accordance with those
targets. In this frame, the MADA has developed a regional development plan
employing industrial targets according to which financial supports are to be given
to the firms (ORAN, 2011). The general secretary of the MADA, whom I
interwieved, added that it also developed some joint projects in collaboration with
local industrialists to satisfy their needs. Among them is the building of the
Industrial Design Center on an adjacent area of Kayseri OID so that more
qualified workforce can be supplied into local industry. The Center, which is to be
run in a partnership between Kayseri Erciyes University and the General
Directorate of Kayseri OID, is also expected to bring innovation to local industry.
In sum, although currently having limited financial resources and legal power, the
MADA is basically designed to provide a more formal political-institutional space
in and through which local employers are directed towards more competitive lines
with long-term strategies.
However, there are remarkable evidences casting doubt upon that the
MADA would carry out such formal coordination among local employers in a
way that is supposed to do. First, the MADA seems to provide a narrowly framed
local decision-making process even though having some mechanisms like the
committee of development open to wider participation. The proof can be hinted at
the words of the General Secretary of Kayseri Chamber of the Commerce when I
asked for the Chamber’s approach to the MADA: “The head of the MADA is a
close friend and he is working well. He lets us know when there is a project open
to bid for financial support. Then we propose the project and get the funding”
(C6). In other words, such informal networks among a limited number of local
actors continue to operate within the decision making process of the MADA. This
is indeed a consequence of the MADA’s distict institutional form based on direct
involvement of local capital and private actors in its executive committee. Second,
as the MADA’s investments and financial support come to be seen significant in
industrial production, it is more likely to emerge some resentment among local
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employers at having been treated unfairly in its decision making process. As a
matter of fact, an industrial employer of a medium-sized metal company
complains about the unfair decisions on distributing incentives:
We apply for projects from the development agency or KOSGEB. It’s a good thing;
we apply for software support, advertisement support, project support. We applied
for a new technology called enamel follow-up palette but it didn’t pass the
committee. The incentives are important, but they’re distributed unfairly. Only the
ones who have connections get the incentives (M11).
The more the MADA intervenes into local industrial relations, the more
there appear similar complaints among employers. Thirdly, local capitals stand
against the wider participation of other social actors even in the lower parts of the
MADA’s decision-making process. This is clearly expressed by the General
Secretary of Kayseri Chamber of Industry as follows:
The agencies give some incentives that seriously help the firms get it together and
become professional. We see that the employers in Kayseri are motivated to make
changes in order to use these incentives. We see the development agency positively
in this respect. However, the agencies need to be in closer contact with the
chambers. If you go to the development agency now there are just so many people
gathered together. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not uncomfortable with people from
different sections of society coming in, but the relations with the chambers should
be stronger. If an investment is to be made in Kayseri it should be decided with
Kayseri Chamber of Industry. That’s what we’re saying (C7).
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on industrial production across the country. To ameliorate this effect, especially
increasing unemployment, central state put into practice a set of incentives, inter
alia, giving employers certain exemptions on employee’s insurance premium on
the condition that new jobs are given to the unemployed. In this context, a
particular policy called Specialised Vocational Training Project (UMEM, in
Turkish), formed in a colloboration among the Ministry of National Education,
the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, and The Union of Chambers and
Commodity Exchanges of Turkey was also introduced to improve skills in
accordance with technological investments. According to the project, provincial
units of those ministries, taking into consideration industrial employers’ demands,
set up three-month training courses at Vocational High Schools to which at least
six-month unemployed labourers can freely attend only in a promise to three-
month work at a company involved in the project in order to get practice. During
this six-month period, central state also pays so-called trainees a two-third of the
official minimum wage. The only thing that is expected of industrial employers is
to employ trainees for a longer period after a three-month practice. The interviews
show that both policies have considerably appealed to local industrialists in
Kayseri. Nearly all big-sized industrial firms are reported to have benefited those
state incentives. Even the companies’ employment strategies became revised
according to the conditions of such incentives 75 . As for the UMEM project
covering the years of 2010-2015, there are 1324 trainees who have taken various
courses at three different Vocational High Schools in Kayseri, according to the
numbers provided by the local department of central state Labour Agency (İş-
Kur) by July of 2012.
75
This has been directly reflected in job advertisements within local industry that
particulary refers to a six-month unemployment as a condition among others to apply for.
When I asked the reason of that condition, a managerial interviewee from a local textile
company replied as follows: “It’s actually because of an exceptional or temporary
situation: according to the regulations of the bag law, when businesses hired someone
who was unemployed before, the state would pay the insurance premiums from 36 to 48
months. In order to benefit from it we prefer to hire people who’ve been in the
unemployed status for 6 months. The state is applying this rule so as to prevent the firms
from abusing this by hiring and firing people all the time. So that’s why we prioritize the
unemployed people”
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In a nutshell, the competitive pressures on industrial production as well as
its development level have required a fundamental restructuring in local industrial
patterns towards formally operating industrial networks that would produce a
number of specialisations in product types within a vertical division of labour
among industrial firms having with long-term strategies. However, there have
been no remarkable endogeneous initiatives appeared on the part of local
employers to lead such a structural change in local industry. In this line, the
continuation of local industrial accumulation becomes depended more on the
central state interventions. It is within this structural context, and particularly in
the wake of 2008 world economic crisis, that the direct state interventions have
been much involved in local industrial relations either through the regional
development agency’s (the MADA) attempts ranging from preparing industrial
planning to some supplementary investments or in the forms of increasing
industrial incentives in various titles. However, the more the state is involved into
local industrial relations, the more it undermines their fetishistic nature as
operating seemingly on individual and private base since the state involvements
make these relations politicized. Both the MADA’s activities and the central
state’s industrial incentives, while complementing industrial accumulation in
certain ways, have also led to the emergence of grievances among local industrial
actors. These grievances not only belong to the employers resenting being treated
unfairly in the decision making process of such interventions but also, more
importantly, appear on the part of the employees to be an essential critique to the
relations between the state and capital as they have experienced them.
Okay, I’m going to be frank with you now. You know UMEM, right? UMEM and
İş-Kur have a joint project. I applied to İş-Kur as a worker. I attended the
vocational courses. They put me to Boyçelik to work from 7 in the morning until 6
in the evening for 30 liras per day. I worked 22 days a month. If they hire a worker
they’ll pay them 720 liras as the minimum wage, plus 230 liras for the insurance;
it’ll cost the employer 1000TL. But this UMEM is such a trick that Boyçelik hired
workers under UMEM so they don’t pay for them because they’ve generated
employment. A worker costs 330 liras to the boss. Therefore the boss makes a
profit of 750 liras off-the-cuff. Plus, just because the boss extended your contract,
the state pays for your insurance. In fact, the employer needs standard personnel
but he gets the workers for cheap by hiring with UMEM. The state gives an
incredible amount of support (W42).
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Given the apparent direct relations between the state and local employers,
workers then find a legitimate base to raise certain demands, if not immediately
from their employers, from the state: “We see the state giving various incentives
to the employers. If the employers are going to fall in bankruptacy when they pay
more than minimum wages; then, the state should give incentives to the workers
as well” (W4). In short, on the one hand state interventions are increasingly
required for the continuing of industrial accumulation; on the other hand, they
provoke conflictual perceptions among individual actors. What is the impact of
these individual perceptions on class relations? Do they provide workers with a
common perception against existing class relations? It is clear that these important
questions cannot be responded entirely at this level as workers’ perceptions are
shaped within a wider scale of class relations. In this regard, the next section
investigates the ways in which workplace level relations have been variably
interlinked with urban social relations, thereby analysing class relations and
workers’ conditions within a wider socio-spatial context.
The city itself would certainly appeal to a researcher doing a field study in
Kayseri in any topic. This mainly stems from a series of urban spatial structures
that stand out apparently even in a short journey from the bus terminal to the city
center: on the one hand high-rise apartments, new office buildings and big-sized
urban investments i.e. the new stadium, tramway etc. that are settled within a
highly planned spatial organisation lead one to think of a rapid modernisation
process in the middle of the poor central Anatolia; on the other hand,
concentration of city center in a single zone, its less differentiated nature and
dominance of small-sized shops that are associated with conservative climate of
urban social life provide opposite thoughts. It is actually these contrasting images
of the city between modern and traditional to which many analyses refer as the
enigma of local industrial development in Kayseri. It is further argued that while
local entrepreneurs seek out profitable investment to bring economic development
to the city, urban management compensate for their unsettling consequences via
the distinct urban relations based on traditional values. Hence, a unique urban
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combination between entrepreneurism and conservatism emerges as a model for
local economic development (Keyman and Lorosdağı-Koyuncu, 2010; İ. Öztürk,
2010)
The daily life is organized according to the understanding of the small retailers and
tradesmen while the general course of life is shaped according to the investments of
184
financial capital. The daily life is coded by the big bourgeoisie pressuring the
politics, and by the small retailers pressuring the ideology, so to speak (Korat,
1997:26).
On the other hand, a recent comprehensive work on the debate of the rise of
conservatism in Turkey provides a less pessimistic picture about the city of
Kayseri (Akşit et. al., 2012: 111-130). According to the authors, a spectacular
local economic development in Kayseri has been accompanied with a paradoxical
process at political, cultural and ideological levels. There has been within local
social relations an increasing degree of religional conservatism and
communitarian practices on the one hand, an unprecedented degree of
communication and connection with the world outside, on the other hand. It is due
to this paradoxical process that local social relations have proceeded not along a
uni-lateral conservatism but within a set of conflicts between modern and
traditional forms. In this context, the authors argue that the most apparent conflict
in the city of Kayseri has been the one between being individual and belonging to
the community, concluding with that (Akşit, et.al. 2012:130):
This community-based life does not provide the people in the city with a proper
ground and environment for individualism to develop, excludes any lifestyle,
inclination, or political view that is not in line with the traditional community’s
rules on the widest context, and does not tolerate such differences. Therefore,
although a kind of modernity has been evolving here, the kind of democratic
consciousness that respects differences and individual rights and freedom is
lacking.
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In Chapter 2, it was underlined that although capitalist social relations are
based on a fundamental separation between production and reproduction
processes, they indeed belong to a single unity that is considerably constituted
within a certain social and spatial context as “locally-effective structures” (see
2.6). In this line, it is through the interactions between family patterns, housing,
living spaces, local market, working conditions, wage-regime, everyday life and
so on that both labour and the place of these interactions (urban space) become
differentiated (Harvey, 1989; Gough, 2001). As the dynamic of such interactions
is based on capitalist production, their coherence as a single unity is continuously
exposed to deterioration due to its internal contradictions. To ameliorate the
situation, then, various actors ranging from employers and (local and central) state
to the workers and residents with different concerns and means attempt to shape,
inter alia, urban space from their perspectives. In as much as having an effect on
such interactions within locally effective structures, these interventions change
class relations in particular ways.
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national scale, urban politics was shaped by the discourse of social and spatial
justice bringing a social-democratic coalition to the local power. In this period,
municipal public investments in collective consumption services such as housing,
transportation and bread production supported the labourers’ survival, and thereby
putting a particular impact on local class relations (Doğan, 2007:150-58). After
the military coup of 1980, the new municipal power, in accordance with central
state policies, introduced private property land regime into gecekondu areas,
where poor labourers mostly lived, by distributing title allocation certificates and
preparing spatial planning for those areas. It also supported mass housing
construction by developing a vast urban land for housing cooperatives, so that
there would be no problem in the housing of employees as local industry has
developed.76 Although social democratic coalition came again to the municipal
power in the local election of 1989, it was not until the ruling of the Greater
Municipality of Kayseri by political Islamist coalition that urban politics have
seen remarkable change in its neoliberal framework shaped since 1980.
The rise of Welfare Party to the municipal power did take place within a
particular local coalition between traditional trading capital and newly emerging
industrial capital in an appeal to the urban poor suffering from inadequate
collective consumption services as well as wider neoliberal policies. With the
financial support of local capital, political Islamist party could organize a large
charity network for urban poor that was then used effectively as an electoral base.
Indeed, such charity politics corresponded particulary to the interest of rapidly
growing industrial capital in Kayseri OID that began to face some class tensions
at workplaces and sought to displace them. In as much as this charity network
became organised in reference to religious values, urban politics came to be
reformulated not only within such top-down direct material supports to the
labourers but also through religious-communitarian considerations of urban social
relations. This is clearly reflected in the image of “white city of Kayseri” (Beyaz
76
Although the project had initially aimed to build 15,000 houses, the Belsin housing
cooperative could produce 9,000 of them when it was completed in 1989 (Doğan,
2007:167).
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Şehir) given as a name to the new mass housing project developed by Islamist
ruling party in local power. As Doğan (2007:235) argues, the image of “white city”
has a meaning beyond its name, representing a sort of homogeneous and coherent
urban space in a clear differentiation from the outside. Within such a religiously-
communutarian perspective, while avoiding big-sized urban projects that could
only be held by wider-scale actors, political Islamist coalition increased charity
activities and continued to invest in some mass housing projects and collective
services. Thus, the survival of urban poor labourers became considerably
socialised via a religious-communitarian urban politics. Accompanied to this
socialisation; however, has been the development of de-unionisation and
subcontracting in the production of municipal services. In other words, municipal
workers were burdened with the cost of such socialisation.
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“While reaching to 1500 people in 1994, these charity activities increased rapidly after
1998 and spread out towards 16.000 local people in 2002. Thus, the poor people
benefiting these charity activities went beyond the ones considered as non-active
workforce such as old, disabled or orphan” (Doğan, 2007: 248).
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(2007:261) depicted, there appeared a transformation from so-called “white city”
to “the city of charitable people”.
In parallel with this shift, some recently published works on the city of
Kayseri, even the ones with a neo-institutionalist approach, point to an unequal
and heterogenous urban development:
Kayseri has mostly been seen and considered in terms of economic success and
wealth. However, nearly the half of the town has recently been experiencing
poverty that gradually becomes deeper. Especially in the outskirts of both the
souther and northern parts of the town, the poverty rates are rapidly
increasing....The town no more is able to represent an immigrant friendly feature
especially in terms of livable dwelling areas. ... On the one hand the rapid
population growth and on the other the rapidly increasing land value and the
annuity expectations of the land owners restrained the local opportunities of
finding livable dwelling areas. The other face of the town of Kayseri has
gradually been apparent especially since 2000s (Hovardaoğlu, 2009:183-4).
With these practices coming as the result of a strategy to create an urban look, the
city of Kayseri which has the conservative social organization that is typical of
Anatolian cities has built a new system of values by associating its
conservativeness, which it has submitted to the fluctuations in commercial and
industrial capital, with national and international processes of accumulation. It
has been configuring the characteristics of life in favor of the decisions made by
capital owners in a way that would make their urban lives comfortable while
keeping the ones with the knowledge and experience to enhance this power in the
city (Zengin and Urkmez, 2013: 105-6).
Interviews with the workers provide a parallel picture with this recently
increasing urban spatial differentiation in Kayseri. They revealed that there has
been a remarkable differention in urban space, of the north and west of the city
from the south and east. In general, labourers live in the north and west part of the
city within different types of housing. Among them are the high-rise cooperative
apartments in the district of Belsin Kürsü next to Kayseri OID, the two or three-
storey semi-detached houses in the district of Eskişehir Bağları as a formely
gecekondu prevention zone, and relatively less apartments and the gecekondu
buildings in Battalaltı, Gaziosmanpaşa, Hürriyet and Yeşil districts. Out of these
districts in the north and west of the city, I also met a few workers living in the far
south (Talas) and north-east (Argıncık) of the city where relatively middle-income
people live. It is reported that workers also choose to stay in the east edge of the
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city where the Mass Housing Administration (MHA) initiated new housing units
for lower income people. Nevertheless, it could not be possible to come across
any industrial worker as a dweller of the eastern part of the city center, Alpaslan
district, where shopping centres, office buildings and luxury apartments have
recently concentrated.
On the other hand, there has been a clear shift in the way labourers achieve
to be an owner-occupier. It is understood from the interviews that the main way to
be a homeowner among workers was previously either/both through selling of
gecekondu house or land as the city developed to its outskirts or/and via the
participation into housing cooperatives subsidized by the municipal government.
The districts of Eskişehir Bağları and Belsin Kürsü where labourers mainly live in
the city include many examples of these ways of homeownership:
This place has been arranged as an illegal housing prevention zone by the
municipality. It used to be a vineyard; like its name, Eskişehir vineyards. City-
dwellers used to have vineyards on this hill. The municipality bought it to build an
illegal housing prevention zone with the money coming in from the treasury. Then
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they sold it to the public for them to build houses. They built two- or three-storey
houses according to the projects determined by the municipality. We bought this
place from a person though. The guy was a manager at the municipality so he
bought it somehow when it was up for sale. Then he sold it to us through the notary
because an annotation was put on to the title deed. We had a house in Hürriyet
district but we sold it. With that money and more we bought this land and built the
house eventually. We paid 14-15 thousand liras for the land in 2004. Now we live
on the ground floor, my mom above us, and my siblings one above her (W, 49).
Even though frequently being associated with the abuse and corruption cases,
the above ways to be a homeowner involved relatively larger social processes
beyond market exhange relation between (local) state, urban poor and small-scale
contractors. Nevertheless, they have recently disappeared to a great extent as the
Greater Municipality of Kayseri withdrew itself from subsidizing low-income
housing. It has been no longer involved in mass housing projects not just in direct
ways as the main contractor like being in Beyaz Şehir mass housing project but
also in non-direct ways, i.e., providing cheaper urban land for housing
cooperatives. Thus, housing cooperatives that have long been influential actors in
urban spatial development lost their appeals to low-income people in the last
years. It is within this context that labourers in Kayseri can be owner-occupier
mostly through getting bank loan in the completely individualised processes of
market exchange relations.
Most of our worker friends have taken out either home or personal loans. We get
by with credit cards. I talked to the accounting office the other day and they said
that there are 27 enforceable workers because of their debt to the banks. I took out
loans for mortgage too. What should I do? I bought a house for 62000 liras. It’s
impossible to buy one around here, of course. It’s in Esenyurt, a far away place
after the Eastern Terminal. You can only afford to buy one there. My father took
out the loan because we thought maybe they wouldn’t give it to me. I thought to
myself: if I get a raise of 50 liras every year my salary will be 1000 liras in five
years. But I’m getting 850 TL now. I’m paying 400TL of the debt, and my father
600. I get my salary but give it to the bank right away (W41).
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In our section there are many who are indebted to the banks. I know 3 people who
have just taken out loans (W42).
I took out a home loan of 45.000 TL, and we bought a place from the MHA
(TOKİ) homes. It’s close to the Eastern Terminal and takes about an hour from
downtown. We paid a downpayment but are still paying the installments. The
mortgage will be paid off when I retire (W46).
We were tenants for years. My husband’s been working for years and I’ve been
working for 7 years now but we’ve just been able to buy a home. We bought one in
Talas 15 days ago. We took out a loan of 50 thousand liras but it will be 85
thousand with the interest. We’re just going to have to pay it by cutting down our
food costs (W 54).
With regard to the industrial class relations, there are some important
outcomes of this low-income housing through individual borrowing from banks.
First, since the indebtedness means for labourers receiving money in advance
before selling their labour power, borrowing from the banks leads labourers to be
depended more on capitalist class relations. In practice, such increasing level of
dependency plays the role of undermining labourers’ resistance against the
employer at workplace. This is clearly seen in the words of an interviewee who
told about his hesitation to unionisation due to his debts for housing credit:
“When my work-fellows invited me to be involved in the union membership, to
be frankly, I had doubts. It is not possible to live on the wages, but I also have
45,000 TL mortage credit to pay. I first thought that how I am going to pay if I get
fired. I asked to my wife: ‘I want to get unionised but the employer might fire us’.
She replied: ‘I support you to the end. Having taken my wife’s support, I felt
relieved and took part in the unionisation’ (W46). In a similar vein, having
critically talked about increasing work-discipline, compulsory overtime work, low
wages and silent trade unions at workplace, another interviewee answered my
question on labourers’ response to these conditions as follows:
75% of my fellows are in debt because of the loans; it’s either consumer loan or
home loan. If they let me go now, how am I supposed to pay the loan back for 3 or
5 months? If you’re in good shape and do not have any debt, you’ll break at some
point. But in situations like ours you just put up with it somehow (W34).
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municipality for low-income housing produces a disciplinary impact on workers
within industrial class relations at workplace. Secondly, in as much as leading to
the appropriation by bank capital of a large part of wages, high level of individual
debts exacerbates also the reproduction of labourers within industrial class
relations. To cope with this situation, labourers develop different survival
strategies at different levels. Primarily, labourers’ family ties are mobilised in
various ways in order to compensate them for their debts. In this scope, the initial
strategy is to get food support from their rural ties. Moreover, labourers’
household keep open to the participation of single-male brother(s) from rural
homeland so that the number of breadwinner can increase, thereby contributing to
household budget. A further survival strategy at household level, if needed, can be
the involvement of women into local labour market. To illustrate, one of few
women interviewees said that the reason why she became an industrial worker
despite having a little child who still needs caring was the need for compensation
for the housing credit debt. However, this strategy has some limits stemming from
not just local social division of labour that mainly sets women in the reproduction
of household at home but also the technical nature of industrial production giving
relatively limited space for the employment of women (see chapter 4). In this
regard, to the extent that these family- and household-level strategies do not
provide enough support for the reproduction of labourers, survival strategies are
inevitably extended to workplace-level relations. As mentioned in section 4.3.2,
working overtime and having a second job have already been the major labour
survival strategy in response to strict imposition of minimum wage policy in
Kayseri OID. Therefore, extra strategies are needed for labourers to cope with the
situation of being in debt. In this context, severence pay, which is indeed given by
the employers to employee upon the dismissal or discharge from employment, is
demanded in advance to pay for debts. I met with many workers saying that they
had used severence pay in order to pay their debts. However, the use of severance
pay has its limits in the sense that it is initially depended on the employer’s
decision and can only be used once over the years. As for the employers, there are
also both financial and legal limits in paying workers severence pay in advance.
Given these conditions, the demand for wage increase becomes inevitable for
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labourers to reproduce themselves (with their households). As a matter of fact,
class tensions within the local industry increasingly appear to pass through the
demand for increasing wages in recent years to such an extent that it has rapidly
led to the development of labour organisations from below in a challenge to the
employer’s labour control strategies. For the two different unionisation attempts
in the local industry that I came across during my visits to Kayseri, to illusrate, the
main motivation of the labourers were to increase their wages.
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can only be built on the far outskirts of the city where land prices are relatively
low. In this line, such low-income housing projects in Kayseri have developed on
an urban land nearly with 20 km. distance from the city center. Moroever, it is on
the opposite edge of the city in comparison with Kayseri OID. Workers living in
this area said that getting their workplaces in the OID takes more than one hour
even by the factory bus-services. For example, a worker living in a flat of the
MHA’s mass housing apartments talks about his urban condition in a way that
seems to have no difference from the one in a big metropolitan city:
Between when I leave the house and get back at night it takes about 13-14 hours.
The commute takes an hour by the shuttle bus. If you miss it, you’re screwed; so I
get up at 6 a.m. When I come home at night I’m totally off. My wife asks why I
don’t talk but I’m exhausted by the time I get home. If you saw me last night, I
swear I wouldn’t have talked this much. But since it is my off day I was able to
sleep 2 more hours. I walked downtown a bit so my mind’s working again; I’m
able to speak properly (W34).
Departing from the statement above, it is possible to argue that Kayseri can
no longer be considered as a medium city involving relatively slower temporal
rhytms and closer spatial distance. Furthermore, the city has been host to more
dynamic and heterogeneous urban experience in recent years. An important point
in recent local investments appears to improve urban services in accordance with
industrial development. For example, there has been increasing investment in
education, making the city having four universities two of which are private. In
addition, with the setting up of private hospital chains the city becomes a regional
center in health services. Moreover, the ongoing large-scale project on Erciyes
Mountain, called Erciyes Winter Tourism Center, by the Greater Municipality of
Kayseri is going to provide the city with hotels with 5000 bed capacity and
various entertainment and sport centers. Each of these investments, while
improving urban services in certain lines, has brought with it more dynamic and
heterogenous social relations in Kayseri. The rise of middle- and high-income
people along with local industrial development has also paved the way for the
production of some distinct spaces such as gated apartments, cafes and shopping
malls that make remarkable difference within the so-far development of the city.
In a nutshell, what was portrayed above by Korat (1997) as a small city of
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homogenous spaces within which everyday life became organized according to
the shopkeepers and merchants’ temporal rhtyms has considerably changed in a
manner that a set of heteregoneous spaces developed along with the growth of the
city, leading to the emergence of a more unequal urban experience among its
residents.
We went to this newly opened Kayseri Forum thinking maybe I’d buy a few things.
A pair of shoes is 200 liras and a shirt is 40-50 liras. I can buy shoes for 30-40 liras
at the underground market. Anyway, we thought at least we’d eat something. You
know they have cafes upstairs. A hamburger is 10 liras. I looked at the people
eating, and had another look at the hamburger and couldn’t believe they would pay
that much money for it. A couple of friends and I wanted to sit down and have
some tea at least. Then the bill came: 15 liras. It cut me to the bone, hurt me so bad
in my heart. Here at the municipality’s teahouse, the tea is 50 kuruş (half a lira)!
(W4).
Thus, these shopping malls, cafes and office buildings that have been
developing along the east part of the city center, while constituting an alternative
urban center in the city of Kayseri, come to be exclusionary places for labourers.
Together with other developments, the city of Kayseri no longer seems to
represent a homogenizing space in which social differences could be absorbed
into a particular urban experience that makes them unified in each other. In other
words, the urban-workplace nexus that has been made through a religious-
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communitarian urban management since the mid-1990s significantly disappeared:
on the one hand class tensions have increased in workplace level relations, on the
other hand spaces of housing, consumption and leisure come to be differentiated
more apparently according to the class lines. As a result, the nexus between urban
space and workplace-level relations appear to be more conflictual rather than
complemetary as to the local industrial development.
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that incorporates more political and idelogical aspects into the analysis of class
relations. In a response to the structuralist formulation of this reconsideration, E. P.
Thompson suggested an alternative formulation in which class is considered as
neither a structure nor a conceptual category but something which in fact happens
(and can be shown to have happened) in social relations (2004:39). For him, while
production relations determine classes in a general sense, their making takes place
within a set of cultural processes such as certain norms, rituals and behaviours. In
this line, he invited Marxist studies to deal with class experiences in cultural
contexts rather than to derive class differentiations from economic relations. This
formulation has then provided Marxist theory with a wider perspective
incorporating the issues of culture and consciousness into the analysis of class
relations (McNally, 2015:141). However, it should be also noted, to the extent
that searching out the making of class completely in cultural contexts rather than
in mutual interactions with production relations, Thompson’s contribution, while
avoiding the structuralist formulation, tends to fall into the trap of so-called
subjectivist-culturalist position in Marxist class analyses.
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aspects do not directly constitute a class culture as opposed to bourgeoisie; rather,
they take different forms in time and space depending on various dynamics. As
Özuğurlu (2005:82) argued, it is only through the involvement of the mature tones
of class-consciousness into these universal cultural aspects among working class
people that a genuine class culture can appear. In this regard, class culture appears
not only within a distinct mode of thought among labourers but also through their
wider relations with other social structures as class consciousness is variably
formed at different levels of social relations such as family, community and the
state (Harvey, 1985).
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One aspect of class-consciousness among workers may be drawn from their
considerations of, as well as their approaches to, certain hierarchical positions at
both the production and reproduction levels. In order to reveal them, I first asked
labourers for the one(s) to whom they tend to talk about the problems at
workplace and feel closer in this regard. In general the answers pointed to master
and foremen that supervise them rather than their work-fellows in similar
positions. This may be taken as a sign for that individualistic and pragmatic
attitudes are more prevalent among labourers in comparision with collectivist and
solidaristic approaches. The former can be found in the explainations when those
workers were subsequently asked if they could approach to their work-fellows, as
a worker replied obviously: “My work-fellows in similar positions with me can
not help me solve the problem” (W10). Individualistic and pragmatic attitudes
were mostly seen among the workers employed in small- and medium-sized
workplaces by the number of employment or in furniture production by industrial
sector. This situation can be considered to reflect, besides the general profile of
local industrial workforce as having less experience in collective struggles, the
dominance of paternalist expectations among workers at these workplaces, and
particularly in furniture sector. However, it should be added that when it comes
to big seized enterprises, such individualistic and pragmatic attitudes particularly
among furniture sector workers apparently weaken in favour of collectivist and
solidaristic approaches. This seems to be relevant to the undermining of the
paternalist considerations as formal and disciplinary impositions develop along
with the growing of workplaces in size. To illustrate, a worker from the leading
local furniture factory explains the reason why he came to feel closer to his work-
fellows as follows:
We have separate cafeterias for the managers and the superintendents; and now
they’ve separated the foremen too. They’ve separated their shuttle buses as well.
They don’t take the buses anymore; they take a special minibus with air
conditioning that is more comfortable. When you’re in a position like this you have
no friends but the workers around you (W34).
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pragmatic attitudes by turning themselves more to their work-fellows.
Nevertheless, a sort of collective feeling among workers seems to be limited in
the extent of their relations with master and foremen directly imposing such
policies. It is understood that there are still some paternalist expectations towards
employers on the part of workers employed at those big-seized workplaces. The
above worker, while being highly critical against his master, foremen and
managers due their disciplinary impositions, also tends to place his employer on a
different side in a distinct expectation in favour of workers:
I tell my coworkers that the boss probably does not even know most of what we go
through here. They’ve built such a system that the work would go on even if the
boss did not show up for ten years. For instance, if I tell Hacı Boydak to mount the
air conditioner he’ll do it right away, and huff at the ones below him. But then the
foremen would get mad at me for telling the boss (W34).
The one who is in the most similar situation as mine is the worker. The guy who
has to pinch pennies is the closest to me. Then comes the foreman, and I cannot go
any higher than him (W4).
The fact that workers in metal sector tend to give priority to work-fellows in
workplace-level relations is quite relevant to the labour process which involves
relatively more collective practices in highly heavy and dangerous work
conditions. These practices and conditions make metal workers develop a sort of
solidaristic ties among each other. As for the textile workers, they manifested
similar reactions against master and foremen mainly by giving references to their
disciplinary impositions over them. In comparision with the furniture sector
workers, there is no one among local textile workers interviewed who approached
to their employers in a paternalist expectation. Yet, this fact cannot be taken
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solely to consider the existence of a sort of coherent collective feelings among
them. Rather, it seems to reflect comparably a less degree of paternalist
involvement of employer in workplace-level relations in textile sector due to its
specific aspects in terms of the size and nature of labour process. Working mostly
at big-seized workplaces, textile workers, particulary in yarn production, are
generally employed in highly unqualified jobs reduced to the simple control
processes of working machines, thus representing less skilled as well as more
mobile and fragmented part of local workforce. In this respect, textile employers
are less interested in paternalist protections than disciplinary practices in
production process.
As another way for revealing the class feelings among workers’ imagination,
I also asked the workers intervieweed to define the identities of both the boss and
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worker: “who is the boss?” “who is the worker?” A larger part of workers’
answers converged on the neutral definitions of these social forms i.e., “boss gives
job” and “worker is employed to work”. However, it is quite recognizable that
workers at big-seized workplaces tend to consider such definitions in some
ambiguous class separations: “the boss is the person who makes me work; the
worker is the one who works for the wage” (W 31), “the boss is the owner of the
factory; the worker is the person who have to work” (W17). In this line, a clear
differentiation in workers’ imagination is seen on the part of metal sector workers.
Their imaginations on the relations between employer and employee are
apparently arisen from tensions and conflicts.
The boss is the king. If the king of the jungle is the lion, the bosses are the kings of
the Industry. The worker is the slave (W40).
The boss is the one who leeches off of the worker whereas the worker is the one
who lifts up the company by his work but loses himself (W15).
The boss is the one who has his way. The worker is the slave because you come in
early in the morning and work until the evening; you work to death (W4).
The bosses are a group of unjust people. The workers are the people who demand
their fair share (W25).
The boss exploits the worker. The worker is the one surviving with his labor (W53).
The boss uses the worker like a slave, who does not have a sense of justice. The
worker means the slave. (W49).
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beliefs do not allow him to be unfair. Yet, it is immediately added, he should be a
real religious person instead of having pretentious practices.
The boss should be a believer, first of all. Really.It’s important that he listens to us
when we have a problem (W13).
The boss should be religious. It would be better for me if he is pious, then he would
look out for his workers (W17).
It’s good for a boss to be religious. Then he will at least give people their fair share,
I mean to a certain extent. And I’m talking about the ones who really have faith.
Some of them are just showing off. The believer fears God (W4).
It’s important that the boss is devout. How can harm come from a Muslim? But he
must be a real Muslim, not like the fake ones here at the Industry (W36).
I’ve seen both the religious and compassionate ones who were unfair. Does he pay
my salary on time, or does he give me my share? That’s what matters (W29).
The boss must know what it means to be human. He should be able consider
whether this much money is enough to survive. He should give the worker a bit
more. It’s not about religion or being from the same town. One of the former muftis
has a factory here but the workers are suffering (W12).
Whether he is religious or not, he must give the workers their fair share. I’ve
worked in many places, and, how should I put it? These people are religious too but
they go to mosques to help the poor and then do not give the workers their money.
He prays to show off to the community, does charity work but does not look out for
his own workers (W7).
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relationship as class tensions dominate workplace relations in more severe forms.
Workers’ experiences of these tensions have created such a challenging force in
their mind that they come to a point where not only the employer’s religiosity but
also the religion may become out of the question. Nearly all of the workers who
are critical of the identity of religious employer, when asked if they work at a
workplace owned by a foreign i.e., Christian employer, replied positively. The
most striking response among them belongs to a metal worker who also identifies
himself as a strongly religious person i.e., the follower of sharia.
I like a boss who gives the workers their share. If he does that, then he is already
devout. If it’s not holding up my religious duties it’s not a problem for me. Because
I’m just a worker, it wouldn’t be a problem even if he was a Jew, I mean it (W16).
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religious brotherhood ceases to provide a common worldview in the employer-
employee relationship that have actually played a consensual role for the
workplace-level tensions, what has emerged in workers’ mind instead of it?
What the worker understands of justice is obvious: A good and regular salary,
support for the kids etc. not a whole lot. When you want it yourself you don’t get it.
Then it necessitates unionization. And if there is no such union it’s all up to
whatever the boss says; and that’s a system of kingship. Whatever he says gets
done (W15).
The truth of the matter is that the union is no help. They cut off our money so it’s
harm done to us again. I did not register at the union at the Erbosan factory, then
they sent me off themselves. The employer did. When I was not at the union before
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that, I would get my subsistence and coal. There is no difference now. They send
you off just so they can cut off money from there (W29).
I would normally want a union but the unions are dodgy. That’s why I don’t want it.
Otherwise it’s a good thing but it needs to be side by side with the workers. They
take my day’s wage by default. They sit down to have an agreement with me but
give me more or less the same amount of money that the state would give
otherwise (W28).
In a just workplace there must really be a union but not like these. DİSK should
come but they won’t let it. They’d interfere. DİSK belongs to a leftist party.
In a fair workplace the boss should listen to the workers’ problems and do justice.
Our boss does it at least. He helps any way he can. But you cannot talk directly to
the boss where there are a thousand or five thousand people working. That is the
reality (W13).
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workers employed at these workplaces underlined the need for the removal of
nepotism, unequal workload and mobbing in order to achive workplace justice.
On the contrary; however, some workers associated workplace justice with the
radical economic demands in a rather political sense:
Let’s say he made 100 million; the employer should take 50 million and give away
the other 50. That is justice. These people want it all (W26).
If one’s not just, he’ll think of only his profit. He won’t care about the workers or
their profit. He should feel that if he is earning, the worker should earn too. That is
how you establish justice. If a guy does not act this way then he is not devout. Look,
the question is more of being a just person who does not care only about himself
than being religious (W39).
In a fair place, you seek your rights. In this system it’s possible with a union. There
should be both the struggle and religion. Besides, for the boss to be religious is his
problem. It is not about me. Even the prophet forbade putting so much weight on
the camel. We’re humans and should be treated as such. These people totally abuse
religion; I’m excluding the ones that don’t (W16).
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This phrase is quoted from a passage in Karl Marx’s book called “A Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philisophy of Rights”. The full passage is as follows: “Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real sufffering and a protest
Against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless World, ad the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm the date of
download: 15th October 2014.
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In a just work place, you need to give the worker the money he needs in order to
live comfortably. You even need to write down all the revenue and expenses, such
as electricity etc., and show them to the workers in order to be able to show your
own profit too. If the worker gets a 100, the employer should get 200 at most. It’ll
be better if I explain it with a hadith. The prophet Ebu Bekir, for example, gave all
of his fortune to the poor except for one piece of clothing (W49).
The first worker (W48), who is to be named as Sadullah, was a poor peasant
without land until his migration to Kayseri and is currently working at the biggest
metal-cable factory of local industry. Having worked as a subcontracted worker
for six years, he has been employed for two years as a registered worker in the
same metal-cable factory. He has a union membership and earns 900 TL a month
with which to maintain his family including five-person. In spite of the harsh
conditions of his (and his household) survival, Sadullah seems to be satisfied in
comparision with his rural background:
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services for his kids in the hope of making them at least religious officers. In a
talk about the wages, Sadullah provides a highly compliant profile.
They call the employers in Kayseri religious and charitable, I saw the mosque
down that way. Apparently your employer had it made. And he also had a
community health center in another neighborhood. It’s being said that he gives out
many food supplies as well. Is your boss so charitable towards the workers too?
I’m doing well, man. I’m asking you how much you’d give me if you were the
employer?
I don’t know. For example, if I want the worker to be well I would want to talk to
the workers and find out how much they need, and give that much. I would
conscientiously not want to give any less than what he can survive on.
Okay now, you’re right, fine. But you cannot just go on and give everyone this
much money. You’ll give it to the ones who’ve been working for 10-15 years but
not to everyone.
Would the employer go bankrupt if he did?
No, he wouldn’t. But the employer has made all the rules this way.
The workers in Kayseri say that it is impossible to live on anything less than 1500
liras.
I believe that the factory you work for is among the 500 biggest companies in
Turkey. Don’t you think he can increase your salaries a bit?
Look, okay, I know he makes money. But there is the electricity, water and all sorts
of other expenses, right?
This is my fair share. I’m getting what I deserve to get. God should help the poor.
You know the story goes: there used to be a sultan who told his vizier to bring
whoever he can get. So he does. Then one day the vizier finds a guy’s skull. The
sultan puts the skull on one pan of the scale and soil on the other. The more soil he
puts in the heavier the skull gets. Then the sultan turns to the guy beside him and
says: you see, humans are greedy. Whatever you give them they still want more.
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closely related with both his high level of dependency on wage labour and the low
level of collective attitudes among his work fellows.
I’m going to ask you this because you spoke so frankly. Isn’t there anything you
would like to change?
If someone were to do something, no one would follow him. There are some things
that no one can change. Let’s say you work somewhere. They say ‘come on, let’s
do this. Let’s do it together.’ Then you go ahead but you cannot find anyone behind
following you. There’s no one. You’re alone. Then you back away too. Why? It’s
your bread and butter, after all. The employer thinks: this guy depends on me. He’ll
accept whatever I give him. He’s dependent on me no matter what I give him be it
10 or 20 liras. What do you do? Then the employee thinks maybe he’ll be able to
do something later when he’s retired because he’s got insurance and all.
I told you that the rich oppresses the workers. Can you go up to the rich and tell
them how much they make, then ask for more? What would happen even if you ask
it as alms? They’d kick you out, then you’ll lose your job. Now can you say it or
not? I cannot. Then you’ll be grateful to God and accept it (W48).
In the case of Sadullah, where there is a religious worker yet having with a
high level dependency on wage labour for survival, religious-communitarian
values are not allowed to play a critical role in considering workplace level
relations. Rather, these values are selected in such ways making the workplace-
level relations perceived as unjust something that needs bearing within a belief
giving thanks in all circumstances to God.
The situation becomes differentiated in the case of the second worker (W50)
who is to be named here as Recep. Having worked in construction sector, Recep
has been employed for three years in a big-seized metal factory thanks to his
brother in-law who is a union representative at the same factory. He is in his late-
20s, single and staying with his family in a working class neirghbourhood. He is
also committed to a religious brotherhood organisation called Naqshi, one of the
largest religious community in Turkey which is well known for its emphasise on
order and discipline. Interviewing with him reveals that as there appears an
unavoidable gap between his religious-communitarian values and the actual
material conditions at workplace, he tends to reformulate the former in compatible
with the later rather than thinking the later through the lense of the former.
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Is this “sitting” (“oturma”) tradition very common here? I know local employers
do it, but is it common among the workers as well?
I don’t do it since I’m not married. If I get married, I’ll go to my married friends’
places with my wife too.
There are other things. We have religious talks, religious orders. I sometimes go to
the Nakşibendi order. There’s hatme we go to. They have religious talks there.
Do you also talk about the problems at work and the injustices you experience too?
Injustice is one thing, justice is another. Injustice is inappropriate; and the just part
is done with the possibilities at hand. These questions have certainly been asked
and the responses have been given.
How?
How should I put it? For example it says you shall give someone’s share before his
sweat dries out. It says you shall not do business by using interest. But there is also
tenancy. Let’s say I borrowed 10 liras from you. Would it be okay if I gave you 10
liras? I’ve used the money, and then I need to give you the same amount to have
the right to use it.
It’s about intentions. It’s done according to the purchasing power. For example if
you could buy 10 loaves of bread before, you should be able to do the same.
So interest is fine?
It must be difficult
Now Allah (swt) tells you not to eat pork. But he also says you can eat a little bit if
you have to, in order to survive.
So you’re saying these devout employers here do business with interest and act
unjustly because they’re at the point of dying of hunger?
So what do you have to say about private property? According to the Kuran, all
property belongs to God. But the employer practically says: this factory is mine.
You will either work for this amount of money or you’re out. Do you think this is
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conflicting? Can you, example, ask how he can say that to you because all property
belongs to God?
I can, and it would be based on this: Our lord Ali came upon a mosque while
traveling with some people. He wants to go in, and there is a guy in front of the
mosque. He asks if he can look after his horse. The guy says he would. Ali goes
into the mosque, and thinks to himself that he should give this guy 2 pieces of gold.
But when he comes out he finds that the guy’s gone along with the horse’s saddle.
Ali gives those 2 pieces of gold to the guys who came with him so they could go
and buy a new saddle from the market. Off they go to find a saddle. They do not
recognize the guy who stole the saddle and buy it from him. When Ali sees this guy
later he turns to his fellows and says: if God gives you your livelihood (“rızk”) it is
your right. You’ll have it either lawfully or unlawfully. You cannot escape this.
This guy was going to have it lawfully but he is having it unlawfully now. If the
boss lets me go now…Allah (swt) gives a certain livelihood to me, it is stated in the
Fatiha prayer “who can deny the rızk?” If he is to let me go, he’ll do it. Then our
rızk ends there.
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local industry without a long-term break. Since his high school years, he has been
committed to a unique and small religious brotherhood community in Kayseri
called Rufai, which represents a relatively dissident, if not oppositional, tradition
in the history of Islam. In a way reflecting the dissident nature of such religious
community, Abuzer told that he had been fired from his previous jobs because he,
to use his own words, “draws the sword, if necessary, for his rights”. Interviewing
with him reveals not only his radical consideration of workplace justice based on
his religious-communitarian values but also the power of actual material
conditions on workers’ considerations:
I’ve been told that the workers in Kayseri do not object the employers and are
compliant because they’re religious. Is that true?
Now God gives you a rızk, right? This is a place of examination. There’s no such
thing in our religion. Let me give you an example from our prophet: during the
Battle of the Trench our prophet was starving because he hadn’t eaten for three
days. Then he tied a piece of stone to his belly so the warmth of the stone would
assuage his hunger. Someone said, “My dear prophet, I’ve been hungry for three
days. The prophet replied by saying he’d been hungry for six days. So, he ties two
stones to his belly. This means he can not be full while his people are hungry. I’m
saying all this because we were talking about religion. The life of our prophet was
special like this. You know the fairness of the prophet Ömer. Ebuzer Guffari has
also been quoted a lot. Ebuzer Guffari grabs the Muaviye by the collar and kicks
him off the throne because he was feasting lavishly. Prophet Ömer, for example,
wears a gown that was a bit too long. It was made of his son’s share. A sahabe (the
religious companion) asks why his gown is too long, and then the son tells him that
he gave away his share. Ömer thanks God because there are still people who would
fix him with a sword. This means that our religion can even fix a caliph.
Do you talk to your other fellow workers at the factory about these, especially with
the ones saying this is their rızk?
I mean, if it comes to claiming your rights you’d go with the sword in your hand.
They say that was the way in the past, but no more. But if that’s the case we should
all be sitting at home not working. It’s the rızk coming from God, after all. No. You
must work and be productive. There is a verse on working, man. It says you must
give the worker his fair share before his sweat dries out. According to religion you
need to be paid daily. I’m saying all of this to the so-called Muslim employers.
They’re not Muslim if you ask me … though there are also the ones who
understand what we’re saying and accept it. I’ve seen employers calling people in
for a meeting with my own eyes. During the crisis in 2008 they did not give us a
raise and we stopped doing overtime work, but his son got himself a jeep that was
worth 500,000 euros.
What do the workers of another communion say when you talk about these?
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Well, they tell me not to think that way because they [the employers] are with God,
so there must be a reason.
Do you think they say it despite all the trouble because they’re real believers?
The truth is that there is no trust. They have faith all right; some really feel that way.
However most of them do not believe that it will change. They don’t hold any
power, or there is no union. The guy’s just being smart thinking he’s dependent on
this because there is no law.
To sum up, the three cases above involve different ways of the involvement
of religious-communiatarian values into workplace-level relations, with
completely different roles in workers’ consideration of workplace justice. While
Sadullah keeps himself away from taking his religious-communitarian values as a
reference to consider workplace-level relations in a critical way making him
submissive to all conditions and rules, Recep tends to adopt his religious-
communitarian values to the existing workplace-level relations within the top-
down relations of a religious-brotherhood community to which he is committed.
On the other hand, Abuzer raises a highly radical view of workplace justice in line
with his commitment to a dissident religious-brotherhood community among
others that sticks to the premise as the equality of Muslims before the God. All of
them then show that although workers’ religious-communitarian values
apparently conflict with the existing workplace-level relations albeit with varied
degrees, this does not necessarily provide them with a critical consideration to the
latter through the lense of the former. Rather, there appear different approaches on
the part of these religious workers ranging from the cynical and the adaptor to the
radical about workplace-level relations in terms of the values they believe in.
Such wide-ranging considerations among so-called religious workers about the
workplace-level relations indeed reveals not only that that workers’ religious-
communitarian values are not the single variable that shapes their mind regarding
with workplace justice but also the fact that there is no constant equivalent of
these values among workers but various interpretations and understandings. In
this respect, workers’ consideration of justice seems to be better sought out within
their actual material contexts rather than in a bookish assumption of their
religious-communitarian values.
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In this line, let me continue tracking the ways in which workers in Kayseri
consider the notion of justice at a wider scale beyond workplace level. At this
point, I think, workers’ answers to the question of “what would you change if you
held authority at your hands” may hint at these ways. Leaving aside some ultra-
nationalist resolutions regarding with Turkey’s long-year political-cultural
problems like Kurdish question or some heated political issues at the time of field
study, i.e., increasing tension between Turkey and Syria, much of the workers’
answers point to a particular consideration of equality in society.
I’d try to balance the injustices. I mean, let me put it this way. For example, I work
for ten hours and get 1000 liras. He works ten hours too but gets 700 liras. The
work he does is perhaps heavier than mine. There must be fairness in income (W8).
I’d raise the minimum wage to the poverty line. If you’re announcing this, then at
least raise it to that level (W35).
If I had the authority to do it, I’d have a one-way system. The public workers are
too many, for example - that number needs to be reduced. We work for minimum
wage in the private sector whereas they get 1.5-2 thousand liras from the state
(W25).
That workers in private sector tend to compare their situation initially with
those in state-owned enterprises, and particularly with the state officers, is also
found in many studies on working class people in Turkey (see Geniş, 2006,
Coşkun, 2012). The reason why workers initially weigh them against the state
officers rather than their employers seems to be associated with the fact that
workers and state officers are relatively in close proximity to each other in both
social and spatial senses. This leads the former to develop much intra-class
comparisions with the latter. However, some workers can move such
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comparisions towards a more class-based axis that primarily puts employers (and
the rich) on target.
I’d make regulations to relieve the lower classes. I’d help the suffering workers,
and also investigate the assets of the rich (W18).
I’d triple the minimum wage and change the working conditions. I’d do more
inspections and deport the abusers of religion (W12).
As a way of taking a closer picture of this class culture, I also asked workers
to respond to a set of statements regarding with certain tensions and inequalities in
society. In this scope, all workers approach positively to the statement that
“workers have interests in common that are completely different from employers’
interests”, which explicitly suggests a contradictory relation between workers and
employers. Although this situation points to that workers carry some class
feelings against employers, their subsequent responses reveals that they are partial,
fragmented and contradictory in themselves. To illustrate, when asked whether
they agree with the statement that “one’s richness in a society rises on the poverty
of many others”, which proposes thinking inequalities rather in a dialectical
manner; workers provided a scattered picture in their approaches. A third of the
workers interviewed expressed their disagreements with this statement partially or
completely. Similarly, workers’ responses to the statement that “as employer
profits, employees win too” constitute similar picture in a reverse way. Although
all of the workers interviewed made a clear commitment to the first statement
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proposing a contradictory relation between employers and employees, a third of
them also argues for the statement above suggesting a sort of cooperative relation
at workplace. For example, having declared his aggrement with the statement
filled with a clear class contradiction, a metal worker employed at big-sized metal
factory can subsequently commit himself to another statement yet with a
cooperatist perspective in an argument that “an employer making profits might
employ more workers” (W46). Nevertheless, such fragmented and contradictory
perceptions in workers’ approaches disappear and transform into the strong class
feelings when the statements are directly about them rather than their relations
with employers. For example, the statement that “the reason of the poverty is
simply due to that the poor does not have intelligence and talent enough to make
them competitive” was strongly criticised by most of the workers interviewed. In
this regard, the weakest critique pointed to at least the equality of opportunity in
an argument that “workers would do everything if the opportunity was given”.
On the other hand, there were also a few numbers of workers replying this
statement in a way putting the blame (being poor) on them individually. These
workers are mostly long-year workers who were directly involved in the
spectacular growth of local industry in which many local employers have emerged
mostly within small-business individual ‘success’ stories. Such perception of
poverty as an individual failure seems to stem from a particular comparision of
their conditions with those local employers. As a matter of fact, when asked for
the failure they considered causing their current situation, such workers generally
referred to a small-busines ‘success’ story regarded as missed at a particular
moment in the previous years. However, as proleterianisation became
consolidated, it seems that such individualised perception disappeared. None of
the workers involved in local industry in recent years, during which so-called
small-business individual ‘success stories’ have considerably become extinct,
blamed their poverty on them.
On the other hand, as the statements asked are concerned with their direct
situations, workers’ responses come to a point where collective perceptions are
reflected most. To illustrate, the statement that “the reason of poverty is due to the
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workers’ laziness and unwilling to work hard” is responded in such a way that all
workers expressed their clear objections by referring to the long-hour and severe
working conditions in local industry. However, in a step moving forward, when
subsequently asked about its radical explanation that “the reason of poverty is
because of the existing economic system based on private property and
profitability”, workers tend to respond in such ways reflecting that their
perceptions of inequality do not involve some systematic-ideological explanations.
Yet, these perceptions were not totally exempt from certain radical considerations.
Some workers felt to reformulate the statement above as the “employers’
excessive ambition of making profit” in order to explain the reason of poverty in
their own terms:
I think it’s about being over-ambitious to make more money. It’s about being
selfish and not sharing (W16).
I’d agree but it’s more accurate if we call it over-ambition to make profit rather
than property (W53).
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encountered the statement involving an abstraction regarding with the existing
economic and political system: a remarkable number of workers considered that
“our political and economic system, to leave aside the abuse of it, is beneficial to
the whole society”. On the other hand, workers’ responses to the statements about
the relation between work and richness reveal that their perceptions of the
inequality in society are not fragmented and scattered but also contradictory on
occasion. To the statement that “a person acting cleverly and working hard
eventually achieves a good living standards”, nearly half of the workers
interviewed gave responses that are partially or completely in aggrement.
However, there also appeared a full of disaggrement among all workers to the
subsequent statement that “the rich comes to that position by working hard”. In
other words, it seems that a considerable part of the workers, while assuming that
people become rich through some illegal ways other than working hard, have a
sort of individualistic idea that they can be rich on the condition of working hard
and acting cleverly.
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way that draws upon workers’ considerations about the current government’s
policies.
The workers interviewed were not asked about the political parties for which
they have voted. Instead of their voting behaviour, talking about their
considerations of the current government’s policies was preferred to make the
interviews more genuine. As the interviews turned into warm talks, many workers
did not hesitate to mention the political parties they voted in the elections.
Drawing on workers’ statements, it is safe to argue that a great part of the working
class people in Kayseri have voted for AKP in the elections during the years of
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the 2000s. However, it was not rare to encounter with workers who stated that
they supported MHP especially in the local election of 2009 in a reaction to the
ruling party, AKP. On the other hand, workers’ responses to the question that “is
there any policy of the ruling government that you have supported in particular?”
show that their support to AKP is based on some functional appeals rather than
pure ideological issues. Despite the dominance of a conservative social and
political climate over the city, there are not many among the workers interviewed
who completely confirm or defend the ruling government’s policies. It was quite
recognizable that workers employed at big-sized factories irrespective of their
sectors had more critical eyes on the ruling government in comparision with other
workers. In general, the majority of workers tended to appreciate that the ruling
government provided Turkish economy with consecutive growth-years after the
economic crisis of 2001 while at the same time adding that this has brought less
benefit to them. In particular, it is the ruling governement’s trasportation and
health policies that workers generally considered positive and found successful.
I swear I haven’t seen anything done by the government that I actually found right
(W3).
The government makes only the roads right. The rest is wrong. The hospitals have
gotten better too but the rest is useless to us (W16).
The government has more faults than it has done well. Nobody can deny that
they’ve enhanced the health service, made some major changes, double highways,
etc. However the matter with the severance pay is different. The worker only has a
few things to hold on to, and they’re trying to kill them, too. The lower class is just
regressing (W34).
What I can say the government has done right is transportation, health, and
education a little. Whatever they do is for the bosses. They’re over-pressuring the
lower class. The minimum wage is just too low (W35).
On the other hand, when asked reversely “is there any policy of the
government that you have particularly found wrong?” many workers were seen to
raise deep-seated critical responses in comparision with what the government has
provided for employers in the form of investment incentives.
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The state and the government must be fairer. It should not favor the boss all the
time but support the employees a bit more. The minimum wage speaks for itself
(W12).
What the government does wrong is this: it tolerates the private sector too much.
Perhaps it’s good and they’re thinking of the workers’ interests, but there’s nothing
helping the workers. For instance, the government says it’ll pay the premium if
they employ workers. That’s good. However, the employer is going to employ
those workers whether you pay the premium or not. Employers abuse this a lot.
Even the operating factories received support from them and made a depot
(hangar?) out of it. We have many witnesses. They’ve totally abused it, and the
government does not inspect them (W15).
I heard something in the news the other day that felt so wrong. It said that the
government would not tax the investors if they invested in the southeast. They
don’t tax the employers if they build factories. The prime minister says they just
need to make investments. So they don’t tax them. But why do they tax the worker
so much who barely survives with three to five kids (W38).
In other words, the fact that the government, while carrying out a strictly
limited minimum wage policy towards workers, has provided employers with a
wide range of financial and bureaucratic supports leads the workers to consider a
strong degree of injustice in state interventions. Moreover, it seems that this
consideration not only undermines the neutrality of the state in the eyes of
workers, but also puts it at the target of their demands for economic justice so
much so that they tend to direct the wage increase claims to the state rather than to
the employers.
You need at least a 1,000 liras to survive in Kayseri. The minimum wage is now
700 liras. I think that the state should give 200-250 liras to the workers instead of
the employers. It should, my friend. Whether you call it social benefit or support,
whatever. The state must give money to the worker before putting the money in the
employer’s bank account. Then the employer wouldn’t feel so much pressure either.
The guy thinks he’ll have trouble if he raises the minimum wage.
Do you think it would be bad for you if your employer paid 1000 liras as the
salary?
He may have to let some workers go. Let’s just call a spade a spade. For instance,
there are many rival couch factories. There are so many factories that some workers
might have to be let go if they’re in a crisis. That’s why the state should pay it from
the budget without going so heavy on the employer just like the incentives it gives
to the employer (W4).
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Nevertheless, as it can be seen above, workers’ demand for economic justice
on the state is not shaped by a relatively high degree of class-consciousness
including a sense of common interest among all working people against capital. It
is rather based on some initial feelings to the conditions that they consider as
operating unfairly for them. In this respect, they are open to some reactionary
considerations as much as to the radical demands on the development of class
relations. For example, having reflected a relatively progressive approach to the
state-economy relations, the above worker continued to criticise the state policies
in a rather class-divisive manner:
The government shouldn’t look out for the public officers; it should look out for the
worker instead. And they did certain things better compared to the past. This
hospital arrangement has been very good. We weren’t able to go in the past; the
doctors would huff at you. Now they greet you at the door. However, the payments
are still far behind (W4).
Because I work in the private sector, when I go to the bank they don’t treat me like
a human, but like a third class citizen. The classification of people is based on
money. If you work for the state there’s at least an open door for you. If you’re in
the private sector that door is closed too. You’re entirely in the background. I’m in
the lowest class. Public officers are one above us, and so on. The private sector
employees are not held in esteem (W15).
It is indeed this perception among workers that seems to play important role
in their strong support to the ruling government’s certain policies like the
neoliberal health reform. Although paving the way for the marketization of health
services, the government’s health reform is widely welcomed among workers on
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the grounds that it provides them with a direct access to the state and university
hospitals by abolishing a privileged treatment to the state officers. However, as
the neoliberal content of health reform became more apparent within its
subsequent stages, i.e., the raising of the share of medicine costs on patients,
workers’ perceptions based on formal equality are likely to change. This can be
found in the words of a worker who previously supported such health reform in an
expectation to receive equal treatment in health services.
I thought at least the hospital situation was made better and that we could go into
any hospital we wanted. Now that’s messed up too. The deductibles are too high
now; they used to be lower (W16).
The government services are one thing but the minimum wage is too low. When
Mustafa Elitaş came to the neighborhood before the last elections my dad went and
asked: my son’s been working for minimum wage for years. Why don’t you
increase it? Elitaş responded: We want to raise it but your son can at least find a job
now. If we make such a law they’ll make one person do the same job that two
people do. Then your son will be out of work. Is it really like this? If that happens
the boss will hire two people below me and make them work. That’s it.
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Are you saying that the government wants to increase the minimum wage, but
cannot do it?
I mean, they are saying, we want to, but we wish there was such a climate. The
government provided a lot of support to the bosses during this crisis period. They
said, you pay the 15 days worth of the wages, and I'll pay the remaining 15 days,
just so that you don't fire workers. They supported those who opened new factories.
All the bosses took advantage of this. Many of them didn't need it. They counted
construction as investment. Isn't it a waste of this state's money? They spent the
people's money. May Allah humble the employers from Kayseri, they always abuse.
Employers are powerful; they say they’ll fire people. The government always helps
out the employers in this situation, but we suffer (W43).
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so-called compatible organisations of the wider processes of social relations of
production and reproduction, there always appears a need for some complements
to the capital-labour relation. These compelements may or may not produce a
sustainable labour regime in which contradictons of capital-labour relation can be
managed in favour of surplus value production.
227
unionisation initiative at some big-sized workplaces of metal, textile and furniture
production. In response, local employers rapidly developed a number of so-called
yellow unions, and thus controlled labour movement to a large extent.
228
reflected even in the same workplaces as a set of differention among workers like
the unionised-nonunionised, the registered-unregistered or the employee-
subcontractor worker.
229
ways. With the demise of public interventions in land and housing policy in
favour of low-income people, the urban survival conditions for labourers got
worse. Housing prices increased and low-income housing became possible mostly
on bank loans, causing to the appropriation of the large proportion in the wages.
However, this urban development has raised a collective demand among workers
for wage increase in a way that brings a serious threat to local class relations
based on the strict imposition by employers of official minimum wage within
local industry. Interestingly enough, it is not the local state but central state via the
Mass Housing Administration (MHA) that has been much involved into low-
income housing so as to ameliorate urban survival conditions for labourers. Yet,
to the extent that such intervention is entirely based on the using of urban rents in
association with private investments in housing, the result has not been to
improve the urban survival conditions for labourers in both quantitative and
qualitative senses; rather, it has paved the way for the development of urban space
in Kayseri in ways that make class differentiations more apparent.
230
Nevertheless, the MADA has been in practice inadequate to develop such
coordination not just because of having still less competence as to the
implementation of its policy suggestions but also due to its forms of state
intervention based on governance model hesitating to offend the private rule of
capitalist relations. Thus, the MADA develops rather as a formal political-
institutional space where certain financial incentives are distributed to the
employers according to its decisions. However, the MADA’s decisions also
provokes growing number of industrial employers to consider unfairness in the
distribution of financial incentives, undermining its project as providing formally
operating impartial coordination mechanism among industrial firms. Furthermore,
as state interventions are incorporated into local industrial relations in more direct
and apparent ways, i.e., financial incentives and bureaucratic supports, they give
rise to the development of politicisation not only among local employers but also
on the part of employees. The apparent difference in state policies between the
generous industrial incentives and strict minimum wage policy leads the workers
to feel much the exclusionary class nature of state-society relations to such a
degree that a common economic demand that is wage increase prevails them
entirely albeit that it is yet to be directed strongly against employer but rather to
the state.
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education in particular, and the MADA’s initiatives to constitute a formal network
among industrial firms appear as the significant interventions within local
industry.
Nevertheless, to the extent that industrial class relations are shaped with
non-market interventions, the potentials of socialisation that are inherently
involved into the latter produce various contradictions with the individual and
private nature of capitalist relations. Not only at the basis of these contradictions
but also at the most fragile point of them lies the capital-labour relation. In this
context, industrial labourers in Kayseri have experienced a particular
transformation in the workplace-level relations in which the religious paternalist
labour regime disappeared into a set of disciplinary labour control practices.
Moreover, it has been more difficult for industrial labourers to reproduce
themselves within the changing context of urban social and spatial development in
Kayseri. As a result, being a worker in Kayseri has widespreadly meant working
within the intensified disciplinary factory regimes in exchange for what is
determined as official minimum wage and then developing survival struggles in
the harshening conditions of urban reproduction process. An important outcome
of this process has been the development of class ties among local individual
workers in Kayseri.
232
disciplinary factory regime. In addition, since the textile-yarn sector is extremely
based on the operation of machines, its workforce becomes considerably confined
to a sort of unqualified labour simply assigned to observe it. When the labour
process is extended to weaving; however, this situation changes towards
employing more qualified labourers.
233
However, as workers’ reactions go beyond existing labour control
strategies particularly to the level that an independent unionisation can be
achieved within local industry, capital-labour relation in Kayseri would take on a
new form relatively in favour of the latter. Drawing on their relatively strong
socialisation potentials within labour process, it can be argued that local metal
sector workers are the major candidate to lead such a change in local class
relations. As a matter of fact, a group of workers employed in a big-seized metal
factory have recently attempted for the first time to unionise in a DİSK-affiliated
labour union, Metal-İş Union, after the coup of 12 September of 1980. In the next
chapter, this case will be touched upon as a reflection of the various forms of class
tensions that have been taking place in certain hierarchies at different scales of
economic and political relations.
234
CHAPTER 6
6.1. Introduction
235
responses like quitting job against increasing work discipline to some collective
attempts such as slowdown and short-time stoppage in response to the
deteriorations in wage payments or working conditions. However, they generally
appear as defensive initiatives in the face of a certain problem at the workplace,
develop on the basis of limited demands and then disappear in a short time when
these demands are partially solved in ways without leading to considerable
changes in workplace-level relations. In contrast, unionization represents an
offensive movement on the part of employees within workplace level relations
fundamentally because it aims to give the employee collective organisation based
on the socialized nature of production process, thereby taking them into a
relatively better form wherein to bargain with the employer. This offensive nature
of unionization movement within workplace level relations in favour of workers
becomes more important in the below case where the labour union in question,
Birleşik Metal-İş Union in affiliation with DİSK, is distinctively known to
represent combative and independent unionism among others in local industry.
Given the fact that existing labour unions in local industry have predominantly
served to control labourers in favour of employers, workers’ attempt to join in
such DİSK-affiliated union further means a considerable challenge not just to the
workplace-level relations at a metal factory but also against existing class
relations in local industry in a wider sense.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest among critical social
scientists in collective labour movements within certain local contexts, with a
remarkable literature consisting of ethnographic investigations (Fantasia, 1989;
Hodson, 2001; Nichols and Suğur, 2005; Birelma, 2014). These ethnographic
investigations generally claim that conventional studies searching for class-
consciousness and class culture among working class people are inadequate in the
sense that they produce general and static explanations imprinted with
methodological individualism. Rather, it is argued that the analysis should focus
on the collective movement itself in order to explain the dynamic, unstable and
contingent aspects of working class culture. In doing so, such ethnographic
analyses have developed new conceptualisations for examining labour movements
236
such as “solidarity cultures”, “dignity at work” and “collective mobilization
process”.
237
increasing numbers of employees during this period. While there were around
300 employees working in the company before the 2001 economic crisis, the
following years have witnessed a considerable boom in the employment: the
number of employees was 361 in 2002, 564 in 2003, 677 in 2004, 836 in 2005,
913 in 2006, 994 in 2007, 1075 in 2008. After that; however, it has decreased
remarkably to 935 in 2009, 829 in 2010 and 769 in 2011. It is possible to consider
that such a remarkable decrease in employment is mainly due to the 2008
economic crisis that led to a considerable contraction in consumer markets in the
western countries. Despite the adverse impacts of the 2008 economic crisis, the
company has remained one of the leading big-sized metal factories in Kayseri
OID.
The increasing need for labour recruitment in the company’s rapid growth
period was satisfied primarily with the labourers from a certain ethnic community
(Circassian) that constitutes a remarkable part of the population in Kayseri. The
owner of the company comes from the same community as well. Thus, it is
possible to think that this employment relation was based on, and sustained, some
paternalist expectations between the employer and the employees. For the
employer, the Circassian employees were meant to have maximum degree of
loyalty to him on the grounds that they both have been involved largely in the
same social ties. For the Circassian labourers, working at a Circassian-owned
factory was assumed to provide them with minimum protections against the social
and economic threats under which they lived. In this line, to the extent that these
expectations were mutually satisfied in social, economic and symbolic ways, the
inherent class tensions within the employer-employee relationship could be
subsumed into a discursive utopia imprinted with ethnic as well as religious
communitarian aspects.
238
employees work together in three shifts along with the technical division of labour
process. They have been divided into the cutting, pressing, bending, punching,
welding, painting and fitting stages in production process. While the first two
stages are heavily depended on the cutting and pressing machines that require
certain degree of qualification from the labourers, the subsequent ones fit with the
relatively less qualified labourers. However, workers in the stages of bending and
punching have to work in much more cooperative ways than the ones in those of
welding, painting and fitting. Despite these variations, all stages in labour process
include high degree of difficulty, risk and physical effort that give rise to
relatively stronger feelings of solidarity among workers in metal sector in
comparison with the ones employed in other sectors of local industry.
Now, working in the metal sector is not like working in furniture or textiles. It's
high-risk; we do heavy work after all. You have to be careful in the cutting
workshop, at the press. There are machines that press so many tons. If you don't
know the job, if you're not careful; there goes your hand. Bending and tack welding
are also difficult. Sheets go through cutting and pressing and come to tack welding.
Here, two or three workers work together, standing on their feet for hours. Many
folks get herniated discs after a while. After tack welding, it's time for welding, and
the welding job is also difficult. Your eyes are ruined. After welding, metal
cabinets are puttied and carried to the painting workshop. You have to work in
heavy paint fumes. Lastly, they're assembled and it's time for loading. It's less risky
work, but you carry heavy cabinets all the time (Çer-Sa W1).
I'll give you an example. Again, it's our tack-welding department. When I was on
the night shift, our pay was late for 2 days. Our department got together and said,
let's go to the boss and talk to him. They got together and went to see the boss. Of
course the boss was angry, he said, “Why are you coming to me, are you raiding
the place, will you beat me up?” But he saw that the salaries were paid that day, too.
But the next day he fired three or four people that went there. He cut five minutes
off the thirty-minute breaks (Çer-Sa W1).
239
2004 was the best time for Çer-Sa; it wasn't as bad as this. Salaries were better,
though of course working conditions were always heavy. Some people tried to
unionize. They were trying to do it by themselves. Nobody really had faith either. It
wasn't something that could happen with the efforts of a few people, so I didn't join
in (Çer-Sa W1).
Both two events reveal that the rapid growth of company has been
accompanied by the development of class conflicts within the employer-employee
relationship. However, it is also clear that workers had a poor degree of
independent class attitudes and mobilization. It seems that at that time workplace
level relations were strongly shaped by the paternalist rule of the employer though
it was apparently being undermined. This situation can be readily understood in
the first event. It shows that although workers had a particular degree of
mobilisation based on the collective interest among them, its ultimate point was
limited to the direct transmitting of their complaints to the employer in an
expectation to be solved at his discretion. In the end, as a matter of the fact, the
employer moved towards solving the workers’ complaint on wage payment.
Nevertheless, the employer’s protection came along with his authoritarian rule
that ended up giving sack some of those workers who dared to challenge his
authority by bringing up against him.
In addition, despite the apparent growth of the company, workers also faced
with the worsening of their economic conditions to the effect that they could not
live on their current wages. In this respect, many workers have also sought an
additional job for the remaining time after working 8 hours in Çer-Sa as long as
240
there is no option for overtime work. Yet, these irregular additional jobs are not
only physically exhaustive but also economically inadequate for the workers.
Under these conditions, workers have generally tried to manage their survival
through borrowing bank loans.
We got along well with the foremen. I mean we were like brothers back then. We'd
talk when we ran into trouble. We talked directly even with the boss. He walked
around the workplace, and asked us about how we were doing. But then the
workplace environment got gradually worse. We worked hard back then too, but
we didn’t push ourselves like this. How should I put it, we would work, frankly
with enthusiasm, with a few foremen working us up, a bit of working each other up.
Then, in time, the situation turned into pushing. The foremen told us continuously:
you'll do this much work today, increasing the numbers. They didn't leave us any
time to breathe (Çer-Sa W2).
Most of my work-fellows have taken out loans for a house or for needs. We get by
with credit cards. The other day I talked to the payroll manager; he says there are
27 workers in foreclosure because of bank loans. Now I have bought a house too.
What can I do? I bought a house for 62 billion. It's not possible in the vicinity of
course. It's in Esenyurt, far away, after you pass the Eastern Terminal. Only there is
it affordable. My father took out the loan; maybe they won't give it to us. I thought,
if I get a 50 TL increase every year, my salary will be 1000 liras in 5 years. But my
salary is 850 liras now. I pay 400 of the debt; my father pays 600. I take my salary,
and give it to the bank (Çer-Sa W3)
These developments have also taken place along with the prevalence of
formal relations in the employer-employee relationship. For example,
unregistered employment has been no longer allowed at all and the wages started
to be rendered through each worker’s bank account. In this line, the employer-
employee relationship came to be fully revolved on the market exchange relations
between wage and labour power to the extent that much of non-market paternalist
protections became displaced from workplace level relations. However, some of
them that have also achieved symbolic importance over the years within local
class relations did not cease to exist. They are mainly consisted of the religiously
formed protections such as delivering food boxes in Ramadan month, paying
premium before religious festivals and tolerating pray at the working time.
However, they have been restricted to a remarkable extent. In the conversations,
many Çer-Sa workers underlined that Ramadan food boxes became poorer in the
recent years in terms of both the quality and the quantity of foods. A remarkable
number of workers added that when they received these Ramadan boxes each year,
241
they felt humiliated by the employer rather than supported by his goodness as a
Muslim employer. In addition, it was also underlined that the management has
been no longer so indulgent to the demand for praying at work in case it would
hinder production process and work discipline. However, it seems that religious
practices at work cannot be banned totally and or explicitly as they have so far
achieved considerable degree of legitimacy within the development of workplace
level relations. In this context, workers can even use this legitimacy against the
management, which then give rise to a set of implicit class conflicts around the
religious practices at the workplace level.
If someone stops me from praying five times a day, I'd quit that day. I haven’t
witnessed this myself, but another friend told me. While changing before prayer, I
heard the foremen say, "you are idling around, I'll have it cut from your salaries"
(Çer-Sa W4).
I don't pray five times; but when there are friends who want to pray, we cover up.
The foreman says, go and come back quickly. He says, don't ruin your ablution
every time; it'll take too much time. I can't say those who pray don't take it slowly
and deliberately either. We joke amongst ourselves; we tell those who pray that
they got a good rest (Çer-Sa W1).
242
concern about 15 minutes work time after the Friday prayer reflects his desire to
profit more money which indeed casts a suspicion on his religious practice.
We used to go to Friday prayer together up until two years ago. They took us in
service vehicles. Then they built a prayer room in the factory. They built it because
it was taking time. Now they have a 20-minute gain. They made a retired preacher
the imam, that's how we do the Friday prayer. On top of it all now they cancelled
the Friday afternoon breaks, since there was a 15-minute delay after lunch and
prayer. They calculate even that. Then they tell us they're religious (Çer-Sa W1).
The boss has relatives who he trusts and who obey him, down to the foreman. The
foreman also sees it like that, he seeks men who'll do whatever he says. He favors
them. The boss gives the foreman two billion, and tells him to distribute it to the
workers as bonuses. Then and there, you're at the mercy of the foreman. There is
extreme favoritism when he distributes it. You ask the foreman why he is
distributing it like that. He says, that's how I evaluated your work. There are many
Circassian workers here, many of the leadmen and foremen are the boss's fellow
villagers. But there are also many wronged Circassian workers, even from the same
village as the boss (Çer-Sa W5).
To sum up, workplace level relations in Çer-Sa have been apparently shaped
much more according to class lines rather than to ethnic or religious
communitarian aspects in the recent years. Furthermore, the management has
developed considerable restrictions on such communitarian practices within
workplace level relations. Thus, class relations in Çer-Sa metal factory have been
largely stripped away from the employer’s paternalist protections based on these
communitarian practices. Rather, there have been increasing disciplinary
impositions at the hands of journeymen and foremen over the workers. This has
then given rise to certain degree of common feelings and perceptions among
workers based on their individual experiences of these impositions within the
243
technical division of labour process. As workers have had similar survival
conditions outside the workplace such as having a physically exhaustive
additional job or financially being in debt, their common feelings and perceptions
begun to transform into the quest for collective attempts independent from the
employer.
In this process, the breaking point between employer and employees came
out in 2008 when Çer-Sa and other local factories were hit by the world economic
crisis erupted in the western countries. Since then there has been steady decrease
in the employment of the company, laying off more than 100 workers in each
successive year. In this process, the employer also decided to use the central
state’s “short-term work grant” aimed to support industrial companies decreasing
their production as a result of the contractions in world market. In line with the
conditions of this grant, both the production capacity in Çer-Sa temporarily
reduced to its fifty percent and workers worked only for four days in exchange for
the half of their wages. The remaining part of the wages was supplied by the state
during a two-month period. It has been during this period, in which nearly 15
percent of the registered workforce in local industry was also laid-off, that Çer-Sa
workers experienced a further step in the feeling of fundamentally different living
conditions from the employer. As a matter of fact, while talking about the reasons
why they attempted to join unionisation, workers specifically pointed to this
period:
The 2008 crisis was a trigger for the decision to unionize. We saw this in that
period. The factory got bigger, and another factory was opened in Russia. The
boss's kids got new cars. But they didn't even give us a raise on the minimum wage.
They said there was a crisis. There were layoffs (Çer-Sa W1).
The Prime Minister said the crisis passed at tangent, but we were made to work 4
days a week in the last period of 2008. We were put on an unpaid 3-day off. We
weren’t even certain whether we were going to return to work. It was a very
stressful period, workers were laid off in every factory in the Industry, the salaries
weren't paid. But the boss’s situation is not like ours; we saw that plainly. While he
was telling us “I can't give you a raise”, he opened a new factory in Russia. I
believed more in unionization after that period. The more you give into injustice,
the more the boss walks over you. We also should have something to defend
ourselves, at least for the future of our children (Çer-Sa W6).
244
As a result, when they came back to the full time working, workers begun to
talk about the need for a labour union that can really raise their demands
collectively against the employer. Moreover, the number of the workers seeking
to involve unionisation was pretty high in comparison with the previous attempts.
245
not just a new labour union but also a challenge from below to the local industrial
relations. In this sense, it also involved wider issues than a simple unionisation
attempt in a workplace, thereby giving alarm to the whole employers in local
industry. Second, the decision to join in the DİSK-affiliated labour union had a
particular difficulty in the mobilisation of workers as they might raise some
ideological reservations on the basis of its popular image as a leftist organisation.
Furthermore, the management would manipulate such reservations among
workers against unionisation. Despite these extra difficulties, increasing class
tensions within workplace level relations and the previous experiences of
unionisation made it easier to convince the workers in participating into the
attempt for unionizing in the DİSK-affiliated union.
We have our Cevher abi here. He asked, “we're going to the union with friends,
will you come?” I already thought that having a union to defend us was a must. But
when he said DISK, the first thing I said I won't go to DISK. When we hear
revolutionary, we think these people are monsters. Anyways, I said we should go to
Türk Metal. They'd had an experience with Türk Metal one time. Türk Metal
tricked the guys and so there were layoffs. So they said they wouldn't go there. I
said let's go to Hak-İş. They had tried them too. They were sold out there too.
Nothing to do then, I said, let's go. That's how I joined these friends (Çer-Sa W4).
246
where relatively qualified labour is employed or labour process is depended much
on collective practices. As they have grown on reliable relations, it became easier
to receive the support of other workers in other stages of labour process. In this
process, conversations among workers for joining the union were carried out not
just as chats in workplace area at breaking times but also through several teahouse
meetings in the city center or many home visits to the workers in their living areas.
When it was considered that the majority of the workers employed in Çer-Sa,
which is the minimum legal requirement for the labour union to raise an official
claim to have an authority for signing collective agreements with the employer,
became convinced in joining the Birleşik Metal İş Union, a further step in the
unionisation process were taken to organise the individual applications for union
membership at notary office. This was another critical moment in the unionisation
process that needs organizing conveniently in a short time before the management
had heard of it. At this point, it would be more telling to quote this moment from
a worker involved in this organisation in order to reveal the actual difficulties of
the unionisation process in Turkey:
Now registration began first on a Friday. Those who left work on Thursday night
went and signed-in Friday morning. When all shifts left work, there were
registrations. After that, when collective registrations were over, we started going
to people's homes one by one. That is, we went to their homes, we talked to them
and their families and we tried to convince them. We convinced them and brought
them in. The boss learned about it within the first day. But we were quick and
completed the signatures within two days. Then the signatures were over, and we
made an application for authorization. When we started work on Monday, the
relatives of the boss, the foremen, the leadmen, and his workers were killing us in
the factory. They swore at some, they pressured some; they said “we'll fire you.”
Within that one-week about 100 people were taken to the notary and were made to
resign. There were severe resignations from two or three departments. After the
resignations our morale was down too, and people started coming to us. They’d say,
“there are so many resignations, what will we do?” They’d say, “we'll resign too.”
After that we tried harder to organize. We mobilized our friends at the factory; we
brought back 120 people out of the 150 that resigned. We took them to the notary
and made them members. Of course you'll pay separate notary fees for each
membership. You can't take it from the workers. They are already broke. The union
has to pay (Çer-Sa W1).
247
latter’s strategy was to force the former to resign from union membership by
threatening them with his power not just at the workplace but also beyond it. In
this line, while being exposed to increasing mobbing at work, these workers also
faced with social pressures in their everyday life through the employer’s
deliberate attempt to provoke their ethnic and cultural ties against them. As for the
social pressures, it was particularly Circassian workers who had to face up much
to them since the employer presented himself to Circassian community as being
stabbed in the back directly by his employees from the same ethnic community. In
order to make the unionised workers give up union membership, a particular
religious discourse that recommends keeping away from any rift and conflict
within workplace level relations were also sent towards workers through the
Friday prayers as well as via daily chats by journeymen at work. In addition to
such impositions, the employer developed certain improvements in some issues
about which workers have long complained such as the quality and the quantity of
food services, in the anticipation of defusing increased tension at the workplace.
I'm Circassian, and there is extra intense pressure on us. When you mention being
Circassian, they say I imagine this is happening to you.. They say, “you went and
248
became members of leftists, of PKK.” But now I say, “when I couldn't bring home
bread, did you think about my being Circassian?” (Çer-Sa W7)
They tried to use being Circassian to make us resign from the union. They said,
“does this become a Circassian?” I said, “We've been Circassian for 9 years! Now
it occurs to you that I'm Circassion (Çer-Sa W1)?
When there was talk of a union, the meals that we'd been complaining about were
straightened. But we'd been complaining about the meals for years; telling the
foremen and the manager that the meals were inadequate, that they were very bad.
They weren't doing anything. Now they increased it to 4 meals and made meals
with meat. Do you have to revolt to have what you want? Well, it turns out you do
(Çer-Sa W3).
249
objection to the Ministry about the Birleşik Metal İş Union’s application for
receiving authorization to represent Çer-Sa workers. For workers, this has meant
struggling with employer’s increasing pressure on them for a longer duration.
Worse still, secondly, it was surprisingly at these days that the JDP government
decided to suspend all applications for authorization at the Ministry of Labour
until a new Trade Union Law, aimed to make considerable changes in
unionisation procedure, would be enacted. Thus, the application by Birleşik
Metal-İş union for an official authorization to represent workers against the
employer in Çer-Sa has been left to an uncertain future. In other words, a two-
year organisation for unionisation among more than 400 Çer-Sa workers became
suddenly suspended due to the government’s political decision, throwing them to
directly confront with the employer’s attacks seeking to undermine their
organisation.
In this uncertain context, the only way to proceed for the unionisation
movement was to raise the workers’ voices against the employer’s attacks and
thus to persuade him to make a collective agreement with the union. In this line,
the coming May Day was seen as an important platform where Çer-Sa workers
would make their unionisation movement revealed in wider scale in the
anticipation of constituting public pressure on the employer. The May Day
demonstration of 2012 in Kayseri, which I attended as well, hosted for the first
time to a large group of local industrial workers organised in a DİSK-affiliated
union since the military coup of 12th September 1980. In this respect, Çer-Sa
workers gave rise to a historical event in local politics as well. Although being
seen highly excited and determined on the unionisation process, they also
reflected some anxiety about the prospective development unless the union has
received official authorization to represent them against the employer. The main
concern among workers was to face with being fired. However, they added that it
was difficult for the employer to fire a lot of workers at a time when the company
had just received new orders from international companies. In other words,
workers were aware of the dependency of employer on them at that time and this
situation has made them brave and partially aggressive in the unionisation process.
250
Thus, the leading workers decided to take a further step in creating pressure on the
employer.
May Day was quite good...For the first time we showed ourselves as the Industry
workers. Everybody was excited. After May Day we went aside to make an action
plan. We all met up to talk about what we should do. They said. “this time let's
have a march at the Industry!” We said, “OK let's do it. Let's do it right away on
May 2nd after work. Nobody knows, after work we'll walk to the service vehicles
and then we won't get on them and we'll march!” We agreed. When we started
work, we got people together. We talked with them and we organized the others. It
was around 3 o'clock at the end of the workday. They called the police, saying we'd
occupy the factory. Supposedly we were going to set the factory on fire. We
gathered, we didn't get on the service vehicles, and we started off at the factory. We
walked in the Industry, passed along the mosque and marched to the exit. We were
about 200 people from our factory, On the way, other workers supported us by
clapping and whistling. This boosted our morale. With that, we marched to Belsin
Kürsü, about 5 km. The next day when I got to work, I was sure they’d lay me off.
It was two o'clock, and someone said, “They're calling you downstairs.” I went and
they said, “you'll sign this for your layoff.” I refused to sign. I'll claim all of my
rights. He said, “As you say.” That day six of us were laid off (Çer-Sa W1).
251
a sign of such alliance, the employer offered sympathetically workers to join the
Hak-İş affiliated union instead of Birleşik Metal İş Union.
However, this did not mean that the employer gave up authoritarian
impositions on workers after the giving sack of leading workers. In contrast, he
continued to lay off unionised workers in order to deter other workers from
joining the Birleşik Metal İş Union. Thus, 30 to 35 unionised workers were laid
off with their severance pay in a month following the May Day demonstration.
Yet, there were few workers among them who sought to attend the resistance tent
outside the factory. Most of them immediately started to work in other factories
within local industry by pointing to their survival conditions that they could not
compensate for even a month of unemployment. Worse still, such lay-offs gave
rise to a rapid demoralization among unionised workers being still employed in
Çer-Sa, leading to further resignations from union membership. As workers have
not been able to organize a direct collective action painting the employer into a
corner, unionisation movement in Çer-Sa fell into a sharp decline. In this context,
it became increasingly difficult for a limited number of leading workers to
maintain the resistance outside factory. In these days, those workers in resistance
took a quick decision to evaluate the President Abdullah Gül’s visit to his
hometown for the opening of a new factory in Kayseri OID as a chance to draw
public attention to unionisation movement in Çer-Sa, thereby at least stopping
employer’s attacks on unionised workers. To this end, they prepared a simple
action for making their voices heard in the opening ceremony. Yet, police took
them into custody in advance even before the President came to Kayseri OID. In
addition to employer’s class power at workplace, workers thus experienced direct
state power against the unionisation. Consequently, given the lack of workers’
initiative to develop collective action, unionisation movement came to a point
where the leading workers could no longer maintain the resistance outside the
factory. After the removal of the resistance tent, unionisation movement in Çer-Sa
disappeared into a silent waiting for the Ministry of Labor’s official
announcement regarding with Birleşik Metal İş Union’s application for
authorization. Furthermore, it turned into individual struggles at the juridical level
252
as each of those sacked workers individually filed reemployment lawsuit against
the company.
253
did not provide such workers with a smooth start to work. They were legally
required to pay back either in advance or in installments the severance pay given
to them when they had been fired. Yet, as they had largely lived on the severance
pay during the unemployed period, this meant that these workers had to bear the
cost of being fired although the court concluded that employer had no legal base
to fire them. Furthermore, even if they accepted giving back the severance pay,
this did not guarantee that they would continue to work again in Çer-Sa. In fact,
the workers who accepted giving back the severance pay were dismissed again in
a day on the basis of some fabricated reasons so that they could not lead to a
revival in unionisation process. Hence, they became left with no option other than
filing another lawsuit against employer, this time with a claim to receive
compensation for bad faith damages.
In my punch department everybody was unionized. After May Day two years ago,
we were forced to resign from the union. I didn't resign but nearly everybody in
the department left the union. When they made a certain number of people resign,
they didn't mind the remaining 150-200 workers. I worked like this for 1.5 years.
Now, at the beginning of this year (2014), they started layoffs again, four months
ago. As justification, they pointed to the renewal of the machinery and
technological development. There will be layoffs at the factory for a while like
this, said the manager. Apparently they have a right to decrease the number of
workers with new machinery. They gave me my severance pay. What can I do? I
left (Çer-Sa W8).
254
To sum up, unionisation movement in Çer- Sa developed in response to
increasing class tensions between employer and employee has accelerated
dynamics of class relations in particular ways. In the waiting process of the
Ministry of Labour’s decision to (or not to) authorize Birleşik Metal-İş Union, the
movement faded away as workers could not resist collectively to the employer’s
attacks. Thus, it largely turned into a group of leading workers’ attempts that
would then be confined into unending legal struggles between these workers and
the employer at individual level. However, even though failing to constitute
fundamental changes in workplace level relations through joining the DİSK
affiliated labour union, Çer-Sa workers’ collective struggle also led the employer
to initiate certain changes in class relations. Among them has recently been the
stimulation of an alternative unionisation from above in an aim to control workers’
collective potential in line with the employer. In one of the conversations, workers
still being employed in Çer-Sa told me that the employer has collected their
electronic passwords79 for union membership application by promising to let them
unionise without conflict in a short term. Therefore, Çer-Sa workers are likely to
achieve a labour union, if not an independent and combative one, through which
they would make collective bargaining with the employer. Thus, Çer-Sa workers
would have a particular collective form within workplace level relations,
providing them with a new socialisation base along class lines.
The unionisation movement in Çer-Sa has also developed along with the
rise of class attitudes among workers. It was particularly at the time of direct
collective actions that these class attitudes revealed themselves at the highest
levels. From the coming out of unionisation movement to the May Day
demonstrations and the first lay-offs, the main themes among workers have been
79
With the introduction of new Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining Agreements
Law no.6356 dated November 7, 2012, the so-called “notary condition” for union
membership application was lifted and the application is made possible on the internet.
To this end, the state gave the workers individual electronic passwords to be used for the
union membership applications (for the details, see 3.5)
255
revolved around common problems such as low wages, poor working conditions
and indebtedness, reflecting a particular degree of class perception about
themselves. However, it could not transform itself into a remarkable collective
resistance against the employer when the leading workers were dismissed. What’s
worse, there were few participation among the subsequently fired workers to the
resistance tent set up by the leading workers outside the factory. In addition, when
faced with the employer’s pressures, nearly half of the unionised workers resigned
from union membership in a short time. Given the fact that unionisation
movement in Çer-Sa became easily disintegrated into individual survival
strategies, it seems possible to consider that workers are deprived of class
consciousness and class culture which can lead them to move towards changing
class relations in their collective interests.
Now, if you are out of a job for three weeks, you can only make up for it if you
work for three months if you don't have other support. It's not hard to find a job in
Kayseri; you can find one fast if there is no crisis or anything like that. But still,
even just ten days is a great loss for a worker. If you live in a rental on top of that,
or if you're in debt, you cannot bear the endless struggle. Even if you do, it's
difficult to follow up on it, as happened with us. The employer tried all kinds of
pressure, the union waited for months for authorization. In such uncertainty the
workers could not be patient or find the strength to resist anywhere. Still, we could
have acted harder against layoffs, but we surrendered easily. Inexperience, idleness,
a little cowardice dispersed us fast (Çer-Sa W1).
256
Therefore, it seems rather the high degree of dependency among workers on
labour market exchange relations in their social reproduction process that
undermine the potential of developing collective resistance regardless of the class
culture and class-consciousness. In this line, some aspects of workers such as
being married, old or indebted lead to extra deficiencies against the employer as
they additionally increased the degree of their dependency on labour market
exchange relations. However, it is also clear that the main motivation behind the
workers’ involvement in unionisation movement was to bring into a new protector,
i.e., labour union, from outside in response to the demise of the employer’s
paternalist protections rather than to organize them as a collective power within
workplace level relations. Thus, to the extent that the coming of labour union as a
protector to the workplace was delayed to an uncertain future, individual survival
strategies prevailed over the leading workers’ attempts for developing collective
action. This relation with the unionisation movement was also reflected in the
Çer-Sa workers’ participation to the next May Day demonstration of 2013 in
Kayseri, which I also attended to make interviews with them about their
experiences. Although Birleşik Metal İş Union had still some hope, if not high,
for receiving the official authorization in Çer-Sa, workers seemed to have
generally lost their interest in the unionisation movement, with a sharp decrease in
the attendance at the union’ march in the demonstration. There were around 30 to
35 workers behind the union banner nearly all of which started to work at other
local companies after they had been fired from Çer-Sa. When asked for the reason
of their attendance, most of them declared that they came to the union march in
order to see their former workfellows rather than to take part in the May Day
demonstration.
257
the conversations, workers generally mentioned those days, when the unionisation
movement was being organised and brought into appearance, as the most
distinctive period of their working life in Kayseri OID. It was the time when they
first felt hopeful for the future. For example, as asked if they had any regret to
join the unionisation movement that eventually resulted with their dismissal, the
two different workers who have not been among the leading figures behind the
movement responded as follows:
I don't have regrets. On the contrary, I'm glad I got into it. Sure we saw hardship
and I was laid off. We also got some support from the union for a period, then I
found a job too before too long...For one, even if we didn't win, we fought. Let me
say this; for the first time I felt that something could change in this industry. It
could have really happened too, if this authorization business wasn't delayed so
much. Then dispersion wouldn't happen so easily (Çer-Sa W9).
If there were unionization again, frankly, I'd join again. I wouldn't hesitate. I didn't
resign from the union. I held my ground. Yes they laid me off later with another
excuse. But that's OK, I found a job in ten days, and I took my severance pay.
Others found them too. Yes we were dispersed; we had a circle. I had friends that I
trusted. I've been working in the Industry for more than ten years, for the first time
we formed a group among ourselves and everybody was excited. This would be a
first in the Industry. When we marched in the Industry, it was beautiful when
everybody looked at us with admiration, when they supported us. But there wasn’t
enough resistance afterwards, because of fear, of bigotry, and there was stalling,
friends gave up fast, they regretted it later too, but the train was missed (Çer-Sa
W8).
My new workplace is small compared to Çer-Sa. The wages are a bit better.
Worker friends ask me why I quit the job. When I say it happened because of the
unionization process, most of them don't understand. I tell them, “A union is
something that enables workers to claim their rights all together.” When I say that,
they are interested, but it's a bit early for a union here. Perhaps if the number of
workers increases to 150-200, a movement can be developed (Çer-Sa W10).
258
Departing from the failure of unionisation in Çer-Sa, it is then not possible
to arrive at a conclusion that workers are deprived of class-consciousness. In
contrast, the movement itself revealed the existence of a remarkable level of class-
consciousness among workers. Although unionisation movement in Çer-Sa
became easily disintegrated into the workers’ individual survival strategies, the
failure seems to be much more related with workers’ material conditions as
having high degree of dependency on labour market exchange relations which
makes them quiet fragile to the unemployment threat. Actually, the most needed
thing for the unionisation movement was the solidarity practices among workers
that would strengthen them in the face of both employer’ attacks and the state’s
restrictions. As a matter of fact, one of the leading workers behind the
unionisation movement explained the reason why they became disintegrated so
rapidly as follows:
The union should have been tighter. It was limited to the march and the protest.
The case was brought to the court to return to work. We waited. We won, but we
spent the severance pay too. Waiting won't do. Even if it's difficult, the union
should financially support the workers to some degree so they can survive. Besides,
there should have been moral support. The worker should at least know they’re not
alone.. At least the union will go to the workers' homes, visit them, drink tea, talk,
and support them. Otherwise it's difficult, the workers fall back. Frankly this is one
reason for the dispersion. We should have increased the unity among us (Çer-Sa
W11).
259
movement in Çer-Sa in its rise and fall also enables us to reflect upon the class-
consciousness and class culture among workers.
260
employers. Besides the well-known high threshold levels putting serious barriers
against labour unions, there are many detailed procedures in unionisation process
that benefit employer to the detriment of workers. Initially, the authorization of
labour unions under the tutelage of the Ministry of Labour makes the unionisation
process subordinated to the state’s political decisions out of workers’ control,
which might lead them into a highly handicapped position against the employer as
it was experienced in Çer-Sa. As a part of such tutelage, employers can also apply
to the Ministry of Labour for a redefinition of the branch(es) of industry at
workplace for unionisation on the accounts that certain changes have taken place
in the labour process. The Ministry’s redefinition at the political level may then be
detrimental to the unionisation movement. Furthermore, employers have also the
right to collusive employment that can be turned against the workers if it increases
workplace threshold required for unionisation. Even if the unionisation movement
has overcome all of these procedures against employees and received the state’s
official authorization, employers can have a right to bring the authorization to the
trial, leading to procrastination in the labour union’s involvement into workplace
level relations. Thus, while unionisation is delayed for an uncertain future in legal
struggles, employers use this period as an opportunity to impose further attacks
particularly on the unionised workers so that there would be a less disobedient
labour union when the unionisation becomes inevitable.
261
Last but not least, unionisation movement in Çer-Sa unfolds the ways in
which contradictions of class relations in local industry have developed into new
tensions and conflicts. In response to the workers’ collective attempt for providing
the minimum conditions for their survival via unionisation, the employer
developed various counter strategies to undermine their unionised power to the
extent that labour process has been put into a particular restructuring towards
increasing mechanization so as to, inter alia, diminish the labour intensiveness in
production. Such restructuring, while relieving the employer of his high level of
dependency on labour, increases the need for qualified labour in production
process in a conflictual way with the nature of local labour market formation. This
situation would contribute to two important tendencies within the development of
local industrial relations. The first is the emergence of redundancy in employment
as the labour intensiveness in production decreases. There is then a risk of
increasing rate of unemployment within local labour market in its social and
economic repercussions. As a counterbalance to this tendency, the second is to
invest more in enhancing the skills and capacity of labourers so that they can
match with the requirements of industrial production. In this line, as state
interventions are much more involved in local industry, there is then a risk of
politicisation of class relations that may produce various conflicts with the private
nature of capitalist accumulation. Thus, it is possible to argue that the prospective
development of local industry along with each tendency mentioned above is
embedded in increasing class tensions and conflicts between capital and labour.
This inevitably compels the latter to involve further experiences of collective
struggle against the former in order to maintain their social existence.
262
CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
7.1. Introduction
263
conceptualized this dialectical interplays as between local socialisation of
production (and reproduction) and value relations operating at wider scales that
lead to a particular labour regime. While underlining labour process as the key
site of capital-labour relation, this chapter argued that local socialisations involve
the interlinked relations among labour market, labour process and reproduction
process within a particular spatial extent. For a sustained accumulation, local
socialisations have to involve certain degree of coherence to the contradictions of
capital-labour relation, providing adequate labour for producing surplus value at
labour process.
264
Following this theoretical framework, this research aimed to track the
ways in which these contradictions and conflicts have developed within the city of
Kayseri by producing various local socialisations against value relations in the
process of industrial accumulation. Since these local socialisations are mainly
consisted of three different levels of labour market, labour process and social
reproduction each of which has been shaped within the wider economic and
political structures at supra-local scales, the development of class relations (and
labour regime) in Kayseri was approached analytically at different spatial and
temporal scales. In this line, while Chapter 3 examined the development of labour
regime at the national level in a historical view, the succeeding chapters were
dedicated to the investigation of local industrial development both in time and at
different spatial levels. Thus, Chapter 4 provided a historical and structural
analysis for local industrial development; Chapter 5 focused on the recent
dynamics, forms and tensions of local class relations; and Chapter 6 carried the
analysis to the workplace level, examining a radical unionisation movement in a
big-seized metal factory. Therefore, the development of local class relations (and
labour regime) in Kayseri was dissected into its economic and political
components at different spatial and temporal scales. In this conclusion chapter,
such components will be reconsidered as a whole in such ways providing
empirical and theoretical insights for the future directions.
7.2 Local Class Relations within the Dialectics of Value and Socialisation:
The Case of Kayseri
265
reproduction of labour. The state also took initiative in the production of qualified
labour for these industrial investments.
266
Firstly, since introducing mass production technologies and new products in local
industry, they surpassed small workshops at market competitiveness. Secondly,
most of the qualified labourers in crafting turned into workforce of these multi
partner companies. This then proceeded certain proleterianisation process within
local industry. Thirdly, these companies also attracted rural-to-urban migrants as
unqualified labour into local industrial labour market. This then gave rise to the
development of a certain degree of segmentation among workforce. In the context
of a conciliatory labour regime between capital and labour at the national level,
these proleterianisation contributed to the proliferation of labour unions in local
industry including Maden İş Union, which was affiliated to DİSK, a left-radical
union confederation. As domestic accumulation process reached its social and
spatial limits in the 1970s and local industrial firms that were capable to produce
only within the safeguarded domestic market relations faced with the declining
consumption demands, class contradictions and conflicts prevailed local industrial
relations to such an extent that local industrial accumulation was largely blocked.
267
areas for development assistance, provided local employers with remarkable
advantageous in making use of this accumulation opportunity. Furthermore, some
local entrepreneurs distinctively met with an unprecedented boom in furniture
sector along with the rise of urbanization and mass housing investments at the
national level after 1980, gathering an extra momentum in the revival of industrial
production. In this line, the 1990s have witnessed a conspicuous local industrial
development in Kayseri concentrated in metal, textile and furniture production.
268
Nevertheless, as Chapter 3 demonstrated, the 2001 national economic (and
political) crisis gave rise to fundamental changes in the production and
reproduction processes towards direct market ruling. Thanks to the findings of
semi-structured interviews with managerial people from local industrial
companies, Chapter 4 argued that these nation-wide changes paved the way for a
new period within local industrial development in a number of senses. First, the
2001 crisis eliminated a remarkable amount of small-sized firms from local
industry. Second, it also compelled other firms to improve production technology
and increase production capacity for international markets to such a degree that
there has been more than three times increase in the amount of local export
production in the following years. Third, the 2001 crisis that imposed market
therapies on productive investments became a deathblow to the already doomed
state industrial enterprises in local industry, with both the closure of Sumerbank
Textile Company and the fully privatization of Kayseri Sugar Factory. The
demise of state industries meant having much more than privatization or
workplace closure to the local industrial relations, involving disappearance of a
particular industrial culture and class experience accumulated over the years.
Fourth, the crisis enforced making a new Labour Law that increased the power of
employer over labourers to the degree at which the latter can be legally managed
as abstract labour at the workplace under the rule of the employer. This has
accelerated the undermining of paternalist class relations in local industry that
were based on some concrete and direct intercourses between the employer and
employees.
269
This contradiction was clearly reflected, albeit in a bourgeois paradigm
perspective, in the words of a high rank managerial person from a local industrial
company as saying that industrial production in Kayseri can no longer proceed
simply as a set of informal networks of each local entrepreneur. According to the
interviewee, it must be immediately replaced with a more comprehensive
organisation of technology, investment and specialization in production among
firms and between firms and the state (see 5.2.1). What this managerial person
was indeed concerned about the contradictions of existing local socialisations
against value relations was investigated in a wider theoretical perspective
focusing on three fundamental processes of class relations that are labour market
formation, production and workplace level relations and social reproduction. The
investigation was mainly based on semi-structured interviews with industrial
workers as well as with the representatives of business associations and labour
unions in Kayseri.
270
relations. In recent years, local industrialists have increasingly complained about
the shortage of qualified workforce in Kayseri. Given the inadequacy of qualified
labour in local labour market, they have primarily sought out so-called low road
strategies for market competition mainly based on cheaper labour, thereby leading
to a vicious circle in the local industrial development. The tendency to improve
mechanization of industrial production, which has been seen in recent years in
(some parts of) the labour process of certain sectors such as metal and furniture,
has nevertheless increased the need for qualified labour in local labour market.
This then requires wider organisation and investment for training labour. Yet, the
crucial question is who would take the initiative towards such organisation
beyond individual-firm level by carrying its burden?
271
The consequence has been undermining the long-year paternalist
socialisations that were based on direct, concrete and close relations between
employer and employees. In this process, non-market material protections
provided by the employer over the employees became largely absorbed into pure
capitalist exchange relation between wage and labour. Moreover, workplace level
relations were increasingly organised within a set of disciplinary labour control in
order to produce more surplus value in a given technological level. One of the
important outcomes of these material and behavioral changes in employer-
employee relationship has been the development of independent socialisations
among workers that go so far as to involve unionisation attempts. A corollary has
then been the increasing interplay of control and resistance between employer and
employees within workplace level relations.
272
hiring incentives and vocational training courses. These generous state subsidies
widely used by local employers have meant dramatic perceptions to the workers
facing with lay-offs and worsening survival conditions at that time. They have felt
themselves excluded from the state level subsidies to such an extent that a
widespread political reaction appeared among them particularly against the state’s
low minimum wage policy that has been strictly imposed by industrial employers.
Thus, while complementing to industrial accumulation process in certain ways,
these state subsidies have inevitably led to the development of many disputes and
separate perceptions both among employers and between employers and
employees.
273
Administration played a partial role in the decrease of housing prices in Kayseri
by producing housing for low-income household yet on the far outskirts of the
city where land prices are low. However, it also paved the way for a new urban
experience above mentioned. Contradictions appear more severely in the use of
bank loans by labourers on their needs, housing in particular. Due to the
indebtedness, workers have been more dependent on labour market relations,
thereby avoiding conflicts with their employers on the one hand. On the other
hand, as the wages are remarkably drained by bank loans, there has appeared
common demand among workers against employers to change the minimum wage
policy in local industry. As a result, urban socio-spatial development, in particular
low income housing, has been producing conflicts rather than complements with
regard to the development of local class relations.
274
develop individual or collective resistance against employers’ impositions. Yet,
this section also showed that there are varied interpretations of religious-
communitarian aspects at workplace level even among so-called religious
labourers, reflecting their different material relations in production and
reproduction processes. Contrary to some arguments based on culturalist
explanations, workers’ motivations for collective class attitudes against employers
are embedded within the material forms of socialisation of production and
reproduction. As a matter of this fact, the two essential aspects of working class
culture (the quest for justice and solidarity) as argued by Raymond Williams
appear relatively significant among labourers employed in the big-sized
workplaces, particularly in the metal sector, where labour process includes more
potential for socialisations to offend the employer’s private rule within workplace
level relations.
275
class experiences as much as with their community networks. The implication is
that such communitarian ideologies that disregard class experiences have been no
longer affective on workers. Instead, workers come to accentuate much more their
mutual relations on the basis of socialisation of production thanks to their class
experiences both at workplace and in (urban) reproduction levels. After a sharp
class experience such as serious work accident, worsening working conditions or
severe economic crisis, this tendency among workers can even turn into the
development of unionisation attempts for defending them collectively within
workplace level relations against the employer.
Secondly, workers also deal with the state’s legal barriers involving high
threshold levels and strict political control over unionisation. These barriers cause
serious disadvantageous to unionisation attempts in the phases of both organizing
workers and receiving the state’s official authorization. For example, as the high
threshold levels for labour unions require majoritarian organisations at workplace,
employers can be easily informed about the workers’ attempt and then attack by
imposing various strategies, i.e., laying off the leading workers. In the event of lay
offs, there also appear many detailed juridical procedures to the detriment of
workers involved in the unionisation attempt. Thus, workers have to overcome all
these barriers and difficulties in order to achieve collective representation against
the employer. Indeed, contradictions in local industrial development in Kayseri
have brought to workers strong motivations for attempting to act towards
changing class relations despite all these barriers and difficulties. Nevertheless,
Chapter 6 reveals that high levels of dependency on market exchange relations
among workers on the basis of the indebtedness in their urban reproduction
process play an undermining role in maintaining collective attempts like
unionisation against employer and the state. It is then possible to argue the power
of market exchange relations gives more labour control within local class relations
than employers’ disciplinary impositions and state’s legal barriers.
276
7.3. The Main Findings of the Thesis and Future Directions
The motivation of the thesis was to reveal class relations, labour control
regime in particular, from a particular theoretical perspective referring to their
contradictions and conflicts in local industrial development in Kayseri during the
last decades. The case of Kayseri has appeared as one of the important inner-
Anatolian cities that witnessed a spectacular industrial accumulation along with
the rise of a new bourgeoisie in locally specific ways. These cities are considered
as the pillar of the fundamental changes in the economic and political structures of
Turkey throughout the 2000s.
277
relations between capital and labour within their contradictions at different spatial
levels. At a more concrete level, such relations refer to the development of labour
regime in which employers seek to control adequate number of labourers with
certain qualities at the workplace level in the anticipation of reproducing itself
within a particular place in line with the accumulation dynamics. Thus, capitalist
development has a set of social processes and relations, including (i) the
involvement of suitable workforce into labour market, (ii) direct labour control
within the material context of production relations and (iii) the reproduction of
labour power beyond the workplace level. However, capitalist development is not
stable and secure due to both its internal contradictions and conflicts within a
particular place and its changing relations with the wider economic and political
structures.
This research also found that such changes paved the way for development
of collective attempts among workers towards changing workplace level relations
in their interest. In response, employers develop new control mechanisms, i.e.,
top-down unionisation for isolating workers’ attempts. The dialectics of workers’
collective attempts and employer’s responses within workplace level relations
accelerate the intrinsic capitalist tendency for changing labour process towards
increasing mechanization. This tendency is more likely to produce two possible
278
future directions in local industrial development. As increasing mechanization
diminishes the labour intensiveness in production process, there might be mass
redundancy in local industrial employment. This indeed signs for the limits of
existing accumulation pattern within local industry. The second future direction
may appear in the increasing need for qualified labour in compatible with the
development of mechanization in industrial production. Both directions would
invoke state interventions to overcome their consequences. These interventions
will be shaped through the struggle between capital and labour.
279
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Interviews
Managerial Interviews
292
Interviewee C4: Öz İplik İş Union, 11.09.2012
293
APPENDICES
A: TURKISH SUMMARY
294
Kapitalist üretim içerisinde sermaye ile emek arasında ücretle biçimlenen
toplumsal değişim ilişkisinin nihai amacı artı-değer elde etmektedir. Ancak i)
“ücretli emek” biçiminde üretim, emek gücünün belirli bir zaman süresince
işverene fiziki zora dayanmayan biçimde çalışma karşılığında satışına dayandığı
ve ii) artı-değer, üretilen metanın ancak piyasada eş-değerler arası değiş-tokuş
süreci sonunda ifade bulduğu için, sermaye ancak emek sürecini sürekli olarak
kontrol ederek verdiği ücretten daha fazla değerin üretildiğinden emin olabilir. Bu
çerçevede kapitalist üretim ilişkisinde artı-değerin kaynağı emek gücü sahibi,
temel iktidar/denetim alanı ise emek sürecidir. Ancak kapitalistin emek süreci ve
emek gücü sahibi üzerindeki bu denetimi, tarihsel-toplumsal biçimler içerisinde
işleyen bir ilişkidir. Bir başka ifadeyle, söz konusu denetim emek gücü
sahiplerinin (yeniden) üretim araçlarından yoksun kaldığı ve elinde kalan tek
varlık olan emek gücünü “ücretli emek” biçiminde emek pazarına katılarak ve
üretim araçlarına sahip kapitaliste satarak ayakta kalabildiği bir tarihsel-toplumsal
ilişkiyi içerir.
Emek-sermaye ilişkilerine dair ilgili yazın, uzunca bir süre işyeri ölçeğinde
kapitalist denetim pratiklerindeki değişikliklere odaklanmış ve emek sürecinin
teknik-organizasyonel özelliklerindeki değişikliklere bağlı olarak çeşitli dönemler
tanımlamıştır: basit-doğrudan denetim, teknik denetim ve bürokratik-hiyerarşik
denetim. Braverman (1974)’ın vasıfsızlaş(tır)mayı kapitalist üretimde sermayenin
temel emek denetim stratejisi olarak tanımladığı önemli çalışması dahil, emek
süreci yazını işverenin yönetim teknikleriyle sınırlı kalmıştır. Buna karşılık, ilk
kez Burawoy (1985) kapitalizmde üretim sürecinin kapitalist toplumsal ilişkinin
yapısal özelliklerinden bağımsız ele alınamayacağı savunmuştur. Bu süreçte emek
gücü sahibinin sermayeye bağımlılığın belirleyici olduğunu ileri sürmüştür. Bu
çerçevede “üretim politikası” kavramını geliştirmiştir. Buna göre, kapitalist
üretim süreci ile emeğin yeniden üretimini sağlayan politik süreçler arasındaki
ilişkileri birlikte düşünülebilir. Böylelikle üretim sürecinin kapitalist sınıf
ilişkilerin inşasındaki özel konumu esas alınırken, aynı zamanda işyerinin
ötesinde işleyen toplumsal-politik süreçler de analize dahil olmuştur. Bu
bağlamda Burawoy’ın kilit kavramı, “fabrika rejimi”dir. Ona göre, işyerlerinde
295
emek ile sermaye arasında ilkinin ikincisine maddi bağımlılık biçimine ve
düzeyine bağlı olarak oluşan fabrika rejimleri, tüm toplumsal düzene yön verir.
Örneğin 20. yüzyılın başına kadar emeğin yeniden üretimini bütünüyle emek
piyasasındaki değiş-tokuş ilişkisine bağlı olarak sürdürdüğü despotik karakterde
bir fabrika rejimi sözkonusu iken, sonraki yıllar daha çok devletin emeğin yeniden
üretimini belirli ölçüde güvenceye aldığı hegemonik fabrika rejimleri gelişmiştir.
Burawoy, 1980’li yıllardan itibaren sermayenin uluslararasılaşmasının eşlik ettiği
yeni bir piyasa despotizmine tanıklık edildiğini ileri sürer. Bu, işyerini korumak
adına emeği sermaye ile işbirliğine yönlendirdiği ölçüde, hegemonik bir
despotizmdir.
296
ölçeklerde işleyen süreçler arasındaki ilişkileri dikkate alacak kavramsal araçlara
sahip değildir. Dolayısıyla sınırlı ölçekteki ilişkilerden daha geniş ölçekte
sonuçlar türetirken, vaka-bağımlı ampirisizm tehlikesi taşır.
297
içerisinde direniş ve mücadele arayışlarına yönelmesi kaçınılmaz olur. Sonuçta
sermaye ile emek arasındaki gerilim arttıkça, işyerinde emek gücünün ücretli
emek biçiminde kullanımında saklı kapitalist üretim ilişkisinin sınıfsal gizeminin
de altı oyulur.
298
dönemde nasıl şekillendiğini incelemeden önce, Kayseri’de sanayinin gelişimini
hem zamansal hem de mekansal olarak daha geniş bir pencereden ele aldım.
Ancak daha geniş ölçekte yaşanan gelişmelere paralel olarak, Kayseri sanayisi
1980’li yıllardan itibaren köklü bir değişim geçirmiştir. Kriz ve ardından gelen
neoliberal politikaların desteklediği piyasa terapisi altında bir yandan kamu
yatırımları önemli ölçüde kesintiye uğramış diğer yandan özel sektörde düşük
verimlilikteki fabrikalar kapanmıştır. Fakat aynı zamanda, emek yoğun ve düşük
katma değerli endüstrilerde yaşanan sanayileşmiş bölgelerden kaçış eğilimiyle
buluşmuş ve 1990’lı yıllardan itibaren yeni bir sanayileşme dinamiği yaşamıştır.
Böylelikle Kayseri’de ulusal ve uluslararası firmalarla alt-sözleşme ilişkileri
içerisinde emek-yoğun nitelikte tüketim malları üretimi yapan ve özel sektörün
hâkim olduğu bir sanayi yapısı oluşmaya başlamıştır (Erdem, 2003). Bu süreçte
Kayseri Organize Sanayi Bölgesi’nin açılması (1989) ve kente ikinci derecede
299
kalkınmada öncelikli yöre teşvikinin verilmesi gibi devlet müdahaleleri etkili
olmuştur.
2001 ekonomik krizi ulusal ölçekte olduğu gibi Kayseri yerelinde de mevcut
gelişme dokusu üzerinde yıkıcı sonuçlara yol açmıştır. Bu dönemde yerel
ekonominin büyük bir bölümünü oluşturan (10 ve daha az işçi çalıştıran) küçük
işletmelerin %45’i kapanmış; kayıtlı yerel istihdam sadece bir yıl içerisinde
81.530’dan 69.955’e düşmüştür. Yerel sanayi faaliyetlerinin yoğunlaştığı Kayseri
OSB’de firma sayısı ekonomik kriz öncesinde 459 iken 2002 yılında 383’e
gerilemiştir. Bununla birlikte sonraki yıllar, firma sayısından üretim değerlerine
300
ve istihdam rakamlarına yansıyan hızlı bir büyüme sürecine şahitlik etmiştir. Bu
süreçte sadece Kayseri OSB 50.000’i aşan işçinin istihdam edildiği büyük bir
üretim yeri haline gelmiştir. Ayrıca bölgede uzun yıllardır önemli işlevler üstlenen
kamu işletmelerinin kapatılmasına rağmen, yerel sanayi ve ekonomi ulusal
düzeyde önemini artırmıştır. Yaptığım saha çalışması, 2001 krizi sonrasında yerel
sanayinin gelişiminde dikkate değer düzeyde teknolojik yatırım ve ona dayalı
kapasite artışının önemli bir rol oynadığını göstermiştir.
301
kentinde doğmuştu. Ayrıca görüşülen işçilerin yarısından fazlası, 1990’ların ikinci
yarısından sonra, özellikle 2000’li yıllarda Kayseri kentine göç etmişlerdi. Kente
göçün temel nedeni, tarımsal desteklerin kaldırılması sonucunda küçük
köylülüğün ekonomik olarak varlığını sürdüremez hale gelmesidir. Bu çerçevede
bölgesel ölçekli kırsal göç hareketliliğinin taşıdığı vasıfsız emek gücü, yerel emek
pazarının ağırlıklı bir bölümünü oluşturmuştur.
302
Kayseri’de sanayi üretimi metal, mobilya ve tekstil sektörlerinde
yoğunlaşmakta ve dolayısıyla emek-yoğun karakterdedir. Bununla birlikte, her bir
sektörün emek sürecinin teknik yapısı ve kullanılan emek tipi bakımından hem
diğer sektörlerle hem de kendi içerisinde dikkate değer farklılıklar taşımaktadır.
Örneğin metal ev eşyaları üretimi pres, döküm ve emaye kaplama gibi görece
daha karmaşık ve teknolojik araçlarla işleyen emek süreci aşamalarını içermekte;,
mobilya üretimi kalıp, iskelet çıkarma ve döşeme gibi temel aşamalarında daha az
karmaşık araçlara dayanmaktadır. Tekstil sektörü sadece iplik üretimi ile sınırlı
kaldığı ve dokuma aşamasını içermediği ölçüde, çok daha az basit ve tekdüze bir
makine üretimine sahiptir. Bu çerçevede teknik işbölümünün niteliklerine göre
kullanılan veyahut talep edilen emek tipi söz konusu sektörlerde belirli ölçüde
farklılaşmaktadır. Ancak, söz konusu farklılaşma aynı sektörde ve aynı üretim
mekanında da gündeme gelebilmektedir. Örneğin, metal eşya üretiminde yukarıda
anılan aşamalarında görece vasıflı emek gündeme gelirken, aynı üretim sürecinin
montaj ve nakliye aşamaları için vasıfsız ve deneyimsiz emek tipi yeterli
olmaktadır. Bu farklılaşma, mobilya üretiminde de gözlemlenmektedir. Tekstil
sektöründe ise daha tekdüze bir emek tipinin baskın olduğu söylenebilir.
303
ilişkilere benzer olarak yerel sanayinin kendi içerisinde de üretim hiyerarşileri
gelişmiştir.
304
paternalist pratikler de emek sürecinde sınıfsal işlevini ve anlamını önemli ölçüde
yitirmektedir.
305
önemli ölçüde zayıflattığı ortaya çıkmıştır. Hayırsever işadamı kimliğine üzerine
yapılan konuşmalarda işçiler “dinimiz çalışanın alın teri kurumadan hakkını
vereceksin diyor; ama bunlar işçisine hakkını vermeyip dışarda hayırsever
görünüyorlar” biçiminde tepki göstermişlerdir. İşverenlerin dindarlığı üzerine
konuşulduğunda, “onlar hakiki Müslüman değil” yanıtlarıyla karşılaşılmıştır.
Buradan hareketle, işçiler arasında işverene karşı süregelen dinsel-toplulukçu
tahayyülün kapatamayacağı bir mesafenin geliştiği ileri sürülebilir. Bu mesafe
belirginleştikçe, işçiler işverenden bağımsız yeni toplumsallaşma biçimlerini de
gündeme geldiği anlaşılmaktadır. Örneğin 1990’lı yılların sonundan başlayarak
yerel sanayi işçilerin sendikalaşma çabalarına tanıklık etmiştir. İşverenlerin yanıtı,
işçilerin sendikalaşma taleplerinin önüne geçmenin mümkün olmadığı noktada,
sendikaları kontrolleri altına almak olmuştur. Bu bağlamda 2000’li yıllar bölgede
tüm sektörlerde siyasal İslam geleneğine yakın bir sendika bizzat işverenler
tarafından desteklenmiştir. Dolayısıyla, işçilerin sınıf bağı temelinde
geliştirdikleri sendika örgütlenmesi, işverenlerin işçilere yönelik bir denetim aracı
halini almıştır. İşçilerle yapılan görüşmelerde “işveren ne ise sendika da o”
sözüyle sıklıkla karşılaşılmıştır.
306
firma ölçeğiyle sınırlı süregelen emek süreci yapısının ötesinde görece uzun
vadeli ve kapsamlı bir toplumsal örgütlenme gerektirmektedir. Yerel ölçekte bu
tür bir toplumsal üretim örgütlenmesi için öngörülebilir yapılanmaların
oluşturulması gerekmektedir.
307
zam önerisinde bulunan bölgenin önde gelen firması, yılsonunda yüksek oranda
kar elde ettiğini açıkladığında aşağıdan gelişen güçlü bir işçi tepkisiyle
karşılaşmıştır.
Sınıf gerilimlerini artıran bir diğer gelişme, kentsel mekan ve gündelik hayat
düzeyinde açığa çıkmaktadır. 2001 krizi sonrası dönemde yerel sanayi birikimi
hızlanmış ve Kayseri kenti hızlı bir mekânsal büyüme sürecine girmiştir. Bu süreç
Kayseri’yi orta ölçekli kenten bir büyükşehire dönüştürmüştür. Daha geniş
ölçekteki gelişmelere de paralel olarak Kayseri kenti, sınıf gerilimlerini hafifleten
özgünlüklerini yitirmektedir. Kentsel hayat giderek pahalılaşmakta, işyeri-konut
mesafesi artmakta ve alışveriş merkezleri, kapalı siteler ve büyük ölçekli projeler
yoluyla kentsel mekan daha fazla sınıfsal ayrımları gösteren biçimlerde
yapılanmaktadır. Bu süreçte işçiler en yoğun olarak, konut sorunu ve artan
borçlanma ile karşılaşmaktadır. Ucuz arsa üretimi ve kooperatiflerin
desteklenmesine dayalı belediye politikası son yıllarda bütünüyle gündemden
düşmüş ve işçilerin konut edinme biçimi giderek banka kredilerine bağlı hale
getirilmiştir.
Bu durumda ücret artışı işçiler arasında en yaygın ve acil bir talep haline
gelmektedir. Dolayısıyla kentsel gelişim, önceki yıllardan farklı olarak, sıkı
ölçüde asgari ücret rejimine yaslanan yerel sanayideki sınıf ilişkileri ile gerilimli
sonuçlar üretmektedir. Bu gerilim yerel yönetimden daha çok merkezi hükümet
tarafından Toplu Konut İdaresi (TOKİ) eliyle bir ölçüde hafifletilmiştir. TOKİ’nin
Kayseri kentinde yaptığı, 1036 tanesi doğrudan düşük gelirli ailelere olmak üzere
yaptığı toplam 3128 dairelik konut yatırımı işçilerin konut ihtiyacını bir ölçüde
karşılamış ve son yıllarda şehirde artan konut fiyatları üzerinde düzenleyici bir
etkide bulunmuştur. Ancak, neticede kentsel rantları esas alan TOKİ uygulamaları
kentsel gelişmenin ortaya çıkardığı sınıf gerilimlerini hem niceliksel hem de
niteliksel olarak ortadan kaldıramamıştır. Aksine, kentin doğu ucunda yaptığı
düşük gelirli konut alanları örneğinde olduğu gibi, TOKİ uuygulamaları kentsel
gelişmeyi sınıfsal farklılaşmayı artıracak biçimlerde yönlendirmektedir.
308
Toparlanacak olursa, Kayseri sanayisi 2001 ekonomik krizi sonrasında
teknolojik yatırım, kapasite artışı ve ihracata yönelik üretim doğrultusunda yeni
bir büyüme sürecine girmiştir. Bu süreçte mobilya, metal ve tekstil sektörlerinde
uluslararası firmalarla alt-sözleşme ilişkileri içerisinde gelişen büyük ölçekli
işletmeler/işverenler yerel sanayiye hakim olmuş ve oluşturdukları üretim
hiyerarşileriyle küçük ve orta ölçekli işletmeleri daha geniş ilişkilerin bir parçası
haline getirmişlerdir. Bu işverenler aynı zamanda hem yerel hem de ulusal
düzeyde karar alma süreçlerine müdahil olmaktadır. Bu çerçevede üzerinde
yükseldiği birikim kalıplarını daha avantajlı hale getirecek düzenlemeler vaat
eden aktörlerle ekonomik ve politik işbirlikleri geliştirmektedirler.
309
teşviklerine bilfiil deneyimledikçe yerel sanayide baskın asgari ücret rejimine
karşısında benzer ekonomik destek taleplerini dile getirmektedir. Bu çerçevede
işçiler arasında ortak sınıf deneyimi ve ekonomik talepler gelişmektedir. Hatta
belirli bir sınıfsal ortaklık bağı oluşmaktadır. Bu tür ortaklık hissiyatları, önceden
tahmin edilmesi güç uğraklarda, tüm kontrol ve disiplin uygulamalarını aşarak
işverenlere karşı somut tepkilere de dönüşebilmektedir. Bunlar genellikle iş kazası,
ağır bir adaletsizlik duygusu ya da dışlayıcı bir uygulamanın ardından hızla
gelişebilmekte; üretimi yavaşlatmaktan işverenden taleplerde bulunmaya varan
biçimlerde ifade edilmektedir. Buna yanıt olarak işverenler, sarı sendikalar dahil
işçilerin kolektif hareketlerini kontrol edecek yeni denetim araçları
geliştirmektedir.
Bu çerçeve çalışma, Kayseri’de sanayi emek süreci ile emek pazarı ve yeniden
üretim süreçleri arasında birikim dinamiklerini besleyen bir “yapılaşmış uyum”
veyahut emek rejiminin gelişmediğini ileri sürmektedir. Aksine artan sınıf
gerilimleri, fabrika ölçeğinde otoriter ve disiplinci denetim mekanizmaları,
kentsel ölçekte “hayırsever işadamı” yardımları yoluyla idare edilmektedir. Ne ki,
hem bu idare biçiminin yerel sanayi üretiminin temel sorunlarına görece uzun-
vadeli bir yanıt sunmaması hem de oluşmakta olan sınıf bağları etrafında işçilerin
işverenden bağımsız kolektif hareket etme çabası sınıf gerilimlerinin daha çetin
yaşanacağı bir döneme işare etmektedir. Bu durumda Kayseri’de yerel sınıf
ilişkilerinin daha sert doğrudan güç mücadeleleri içerisinde şekilleneceği ileri
sürmek mümkündür. Aralarındaki farklılıklara, yetersiz deneyime ve artan
disiplinci denetim mekanizmalarına rağmen, Kayseri OSB’deki sanayi işçileri için
varoluş mücadelelerini daha kolektif biçimlerde sürdürmek giderek bir
‘zorunluluk’ halini almaktadır.
310
ölçüde, sınıf ilişkilerini politikleştirme ‘tehlikesi’ taşımaktadır. Bu nedenle, yerel
sınıf ilişkilerinin gelişiminde sözkonusu politikleşme potansiyelinin nasıl kontrol
altına alınacağı giderek daha önemli soru haline gelmektedir. Dolayısıyla gelecek
çalışmaların sermaye ile emek arasında fabrika mekanında sınıf gerilimlerinin
yanısıra daha geniş ölçekte devletin de dahil olduğu politikleşme süreçlerini daha
yakından incelemesi gerekmektedir. Bu noktada tez, gelecek çalışmalar için bir
dizi soru önerisi de geliştirmiştir. Bunlardan en önemlileri şunlardır: Bireysel
işverenler yerel sanayiyi teknolojik olarak daha gelişkin ve daha rekabetçi
biçimlerde yeniden yapılandırmaya yönelik hegemonik bir strateji geliştirebilecek
durumda mıdır? Bu süreçte işçiler ayakta kalma mücadelelerinde bireysel veyahut
kolektif olarak ne tür stratejiler geliştirebilirler? Devlet, merkezi ve yerel düzeyde,
hem işverenlerden hem de çalışanlardan gelen taleplere ne tür yanıtlar verebilir?
Ve bu yanıtlar içerisinde toplumsal sınıflar nasıl şekillenebilir?
311
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HOBBIES
312
C: TEZ FOTOKOPİSİ İZİN FORMU
ENSTİTÜ
Enformatik Enstitüsü
YAZARIN
Soyadı : Gündoğdu
Adı : İbrahim
Bölümü : ADM
313