Blaming Others: Agency Among Unionised Unskilled Workers

8/14/2019 Blaming Others: Agency Among Unionised Unskilled Workers

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Blaming Others:Agency Among Unionised Unskilled Workers

Thesis submitted to theInstitute of Social Sciences

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of ArtsIn

Sociology

by

Erkan Saka

Boazii University2001

The thesis of Erkan Sakais approved by

Do. Dr. Nkhet Sirman (Committee Chairperson) ....................................................Prof. Dr. Ferhunde zbay ....................................................Yrd. Do. Dr. Hakan Ylmaz ....................................................

August 2001


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Do. Dr. Nkhet Sirman. I would not be able to complete this thesis without hercontinuous academic guidance and support, her great patience during my thesis writing and hercontributions to my personal development in general. I would also like to thank her because shebegan to teach me the craft of anthropology.I would like to thank Prof. Ferhunde zbay who taught many courses I took in the department ofSociology with great pleasure.I would like to thank Yrd. Do. Dr. Hakan Ylmaz, who gave the inspiration to prepare thisthesis.I would like to thank all my interviewees for their kindness and readiness to help me. My specialthanks are due to Ali Rza and Erdoan from the field, the officials from Istanbul branch of z-elik and factory management.

I would like to thank Prof. Aydn Uur, the dean of Faculty of Communication at Istanbul BilgiUniversity (IBUN). He accepted me to be his teaching assistant and I believe that it would bevery difficult to complete this thesis without the financial and occupational benefits of IBUN.I would like to thank Dipesh Chakrabarty, Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin who were so kindto reply my e-mail inquiries and told me the titles of some crucial readings.There are so many lovely people to thank and I hope those whom I forget to mention here willforgive me. Thanks "Malta Collective" and especially Veli Gederet, etin Tanko, GkeKamaz, Yusuf Karabulut, Osman C. Parlakk from the collective who are among the mostlovely people I have ever met and with whom I spent precious times.I would like to thank Adviye Tolunay, who was my colleague at IBUN. I have never fullyappreciated her moral support and constructive critiques about me. Adviye, please forgive me.

Thanks Istanbul Branch of zgr niversite and its crew. Especially Yldz and Glizencouraged me to prepare a seminar in which I discussed this study with a small but focusedgroup and thanks Sevda who was the most interested among the people who attended theseminar.I would also like to thank zge N. Serin, Asl Telli, Almla zdek and Ebru Kayaalp, whohelped me in the translation of quotations and I would like to thank my dear friend Fatih Durmazfor his financial aid.Finally thanks Dino Mujadzevic, Bekir Cantemir, Elif elebi, Kenan Alpay, Dicle Koacolu,Nazan stnda, Nurullah Ard and my family who always encouraged me to prepare thisthesis.

I dedicate this study to my father, the great labourer and a man of mercy and emotion.

ABSTRACT

Blaming Others:


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Agency Among Unionised Unskilled Workers

The purpose of this study is to find out the sources of agency among a group of unskilledunionised workers. I argue that the lives of workers are situated in two domains, home and work,and family and union membership respectively become the sources of agency coupled with a

discourse of blame. The discourse of blame, which is the daily form through which a sense ofimpotence among workers, is consciously used by unionised workers under the leadership ofunion representatives. This serves the construction of an imaginary community of workers basedon the idea of a society in harmony and balance. The broader historical context in which mystudy can be situated in Turkeys post-1980 period. In this period, export oriented industrialismwent hand in hand with a kind of de-industrialisation and adoption of flexible productiontechniques both of which undermined the power of trade unions and the discourse of the welfarestate. Thus my study can be understood as an attempt to demonstrate a moment of unionisedworkers responses to these processes. My thesis is based on a fieldwork that took place betweenSeptember 1999 and June 2001, in a factory, which produces electronic spare parts in Sefaky. Ialso visited frequently the union centre in Aksaray. It mainly depended on in-depth interviews

and observations in the factory but I also attended a few leisure activities outside the factory andmeetings in the union centre.

KISA ZET

tekileri Sorumlu Tutmak:Sendikal Vasfsz ilerde Fail Olmak

Bu almann amac bir grup vasfsz ii arasnda fail olmann kaynaklarn aratrmaktr.Tezimde, iilerin hayatlarnn iki alanda, yani evde ve ite kurulduunu ve buralarda da aile vesendika yeliinin gndelik bir sorumlu tutma sylemiyle birlikte fail olmann kaynaklar halinegeldiini iddia ediyorum. iler arasnda bir acizlik hissinin gndelik olarak yeniden retildiisorumlu tutma sylemi sendikal iiler tarafndan sendika temsilcilerinin liderliinde bilinliolarak kullanlmaktadr. Bu da uyum ve denge iindeki bir toplum dncesine dayanan hayalibir ii cemaatinin kurulmasna hizmet etmektedir. almamn iine yerletirilebilecei dahageni tarihsel balam Trkiye'nin 1980 sonras dnemidir. Bu dnemde ihracat ynelimli birsanayileme, bir tr sanayisizleme ve esnek retim tekniklerinin benimsenmesiyle el ele gitti.Tm bunlar sendikalarn gcn ve refah devleti sylemini sarsan gelimelerdi. Bu yzden,almam sendikal iilerin bu srelere olan tepkisini gstermeye alan bir an olarak

dnlebilir. Tezim, Eyll 1999 ve Haziran 2001 arasnda, Sefaky'de elektronik yedek parareten bir fabrikada yaptm saha almasna dayanmaktadr. Saha almas boyunca fabrikadagzlemler ve derinlemesine grmeler yaptm. Ama fabrika dnda iilerle baz elenceamal etkinliklere ve sendika merkezindeki toplantlara da katldm.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

ABSTRACT v

KISA ZET vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER 1 ix

Introduction ixThe Trade Union as a Discursive Device xiiThe state, citizenship and workers: inevitable engagements xivOf Identity xviiiPorous Borders of Work and the Labour Process xxiiThe Male Worker Dethroned xxviClass, once again xxix

CHAPTER 2 xxxv

In the Field xxxvTHE FACTORY xxxvMALE WORKERS xxxviiiUNSKILLED WORK xlviMETAL WORKERS AND THE TRADE UNION liiiMETHODOLOGY lvi

CHAPTER 3 lxi

Two Domains and A Trope lxiTwo Domains: Two Sources of Agency lxiThe ship trope lxxi

CHAPTER 4 lxxx

Union Membership as the Source of Agency lxxxUnion membership: Rising Expectations lxxxiiiMemory and Agency xcviiThe fall of union power ciiWhat is to be done? cxv

CHAPTER 5 cxliv

Who is To Blame? cxlivCONCLUSION clxxii

REFERENCES clxxvi

APPENDICES clxxxiv


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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the sources of agency among a group of unskilledTurkish male workers and to relate these to some aspects of their identities. I argue that homeand work are the two domains in which workers everyday lives are situated and being the headof the family in the former and union membership in the latter are the most significant practicesof agency. Agency is contingent on the use of certain discursive strategies that I aim to uncover.Firstly, In a situation of apparent powerlessness blaming is interwoven with these practices and

blame operates as the markings of identity boundaries. Secondly, a ship trope used in differentcontexts ties the workers to a rightist and statist position while maintaining a workerist stance. Inthis context, my thesis shows that attempts to define worker identity (and elements pertaining toit) are doomed to fail if broader aspects are related to the everyday practice of work and homeare neglected. At least in the current temporality in which Turkey lives through, there is nodiscursive space for a worker identity in-itself as in some heroic narratives of Marxist depiction;and any attempt to trace worker identity draws forth larger/other narratives, in which workersembed themselves.

My account focuses on the factory lives of a group of unionised male industrial workers incontemporary Turkey. Although this was deliberate from the beginning, I felt great uneasiness

about how to handle the issue both practically and theoretically. It was the first time I haddirectly encountered factory life and had a face to face relationship with workers. My previousreadings during my undergraduate years were very effective in choosing such a subject.However, I was biased to look for a given subject position for the workers embedded in aframework of resistance. Although, I had already begun to see that even the western contexts forworker identity became gradually complicated, I still imagined an abstract (Western), ideal typeworking class identity and wanted to compare it with a practical one situated in Turkey. Somesubstantive studies in non-western contexts only reinforced this imaginary with more emphasison resistance in the beginning. I would then account for what Turkish workers lack, and whatcaused those lacks. It would be once again to repeat a well-known pattern that was seen inwestern and non-western contexts in innumerable times in the modern age. That manner ofanalysis makes the case at hand dependent on the ideal model and inevitably misses itsimcommensurabilities, hybridities and particularities.

1Further readings, which I refer to below,

and fieldwork practices shifted the whole line of my inquiry: Without making the concept ofclass obsolete, I concluded that it is not necessary to think of what the Turkish working classlacks or how it is different from the ideal type.


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Due to the nature of graduate admissions to the Sociology department at Boazii University, Iknew from the outset that I would do ethnographic research among workers. Many scholars andfriends alike expressed the significance of such a study and also pointed out to me the dearth ofresearch on workers. In Turkey there was very little ethnographic work about workers, butrelativelymore statistical information provided by some scholars and trade unions was

available.

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This relative absence of studies did not discourage me. A great anxiety on my sidewas how to integrate my readings in current popular topics such as the ethnography ofmodernity/alternative modernities, nationalism/transnationalism in a globalising world, newtheoretical developments in the triangle of culture, power and space with those specifically onlabor politics. Although there were some intersections or shifts from the latter to the former likeOng (1987, 1997), I could not make a similar intersection of interests for a very long time and Idealt with those readings separately. Zachary Lockmans volume, in this sense is a turning pointthrough which the theoretical axis of this thesis could be constructed. Lockman himself andChakrabartys points in that volume, which I refer to extensively, offered clues in fact morethan clues to situate the workers in the interstices of some theoretical fields within a familiargeographical space (Middle East) excited me greatly.

Some words on the issue of neglect: Zachary Lockman, proposes that this may be due to theperception that workers did not constitute a distinguishable social group: many believe to applyclass analysis to workers in Middle East was not appropriate and would even becounterproductive. (1994, xi-xii). This proposition may be irrelevant in a Western context, but itbecomes a very convoluted issue in such a country like Turkey despite more than half centuryold project of development and modernization and an explicit scholarly appreciation of capitalistrelations especially in agriculture and petty commodity production. In my case, the task was tounbundle class from class analysis but still retain their partial validities. It seems that even whenone accepts the significance of studying workers, the reductionist, essentialist and teleologicalnarratives are still available in the 1980s and they pose a significant obstacle. A general wave of

criticism was launched against them, and hence they became highly dubious, but there are veryfew studies that integrate the result of those critiques into the anthropology of work.

A general rise and demise of interests in labor studies is also positively correlated with somemacrological developments. A renewed interest in labor studies since the 1960s wasaccompanied with the expansion of industrialism in new parts of the world, a global rise ofMarxist and radical thought and, an intense focus on history from below and hence a renewedinterest in all subaltern classes including workers (see Lockman, ibid; introduction). The laterstagnation or fall of some of these developments surely has impacts on labor studies. In thecoming paragraphs I will provide concise backgrounds for these developments since theyaffected my theoretical framework.

The Trade Union as a Discursive Device

Although I needed the help of a trade union for access to workers, I did ignore the importance ofthe union in the beginning. Later I realised that the trade union is an important device throughwhich a discussion over my study's objectives could be carried out. Workers already live withina web of modern institutional and social practices. But compared to others such as political


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parties, neighbourhood solidarity foundations etc. the trade union seems to occupy a much moresignificant place in the daily life of workers. In the beginning I was almost blind to thatinstitution. But when I began my fieldwork, in the very first days I realized its sensitive role inworkers' lives: It was a powerful and legitimate device of agency in modern life opening adiscursive space for workers demands. Thus, the union eventually escalated to a pivotal role in

my study.

Nevertheless, a thorough examination of the institutional and legal framework of the union (orunions in Turkey) is not my objective. Rather my claim is to analyse the trade union as adiscursive space shaping the lives of workers. There are partial references to its organisation, itslegal aspects or state policies related with them. The precarious balance of power between themanagement, the trade union and the workers was especially important in looking for a modestexamination of the unions legal status and what that legal status comes to mean in actualpractices. A prolonged collective bargaining process which was delayed by the factorymanagement for more than six months and which was a great source of annoyance for theworkers, was a fruitful case through which this precarious balance of power could be understood.

Like the shop stewards seen as the embodiment of the trade union described by Ecevit (1991),union representatives played a similar role throughout my fieldwork and especially during crisisof collective bargaining. They were the only ones who formally and socially represented theunion in the factory, and their work was very demanding. The leadership of the trade unionmoved strategically and when things went worse (such as the delay in collective bargaining),they became silent and sullen. They did not respond to workers queries and their rising tendencywas to put all the blame on representatives workers themselves without who are much legislativeand financial support. However, when things went better, the leadership of the union becamevisible and by visiting the factory they attempted to take all the benefits of the situation.Certainly, workers observed these moves and nurtured a considerable suspicion against the union

management but they also admitted the possibilities of obtaining new rights and benefits throughthe activitity of this institution and thus they never thought of leaving the union altogether. Theyinitiated aid campaigns for workers and sometimes they attempted to negotiate with themanagement about their problems without applying to the union leadership. Thus they developeda unionised solidarity within the factory while overlooking the union leadership, which isspacially situated outside the factory.

The state, citizenship and workers: inevitable engagements

Although I could not directly focus on issues of the state, modernity and citizenship, I have

pursued my research in the light of the following discussion.Sirman (1990) had already shown the representational internality of the state in the very dailylives of Turkish villagers but it was only after reading the warnings of Chakrabarty in Lockman'sedition (1994) that I realised the need to think of the state as an actor in my study. Chakrabartyswarning is about how most of the scholars in that volume treated the state: The state was alwaysdepicted in a repression-resistance model as an enemy of and as an entity external to the workers.He says, "[in those works criticised] the worker exists as an identity, an agency, a subject, thathas to negotiate with the state but only as an externality to itself. As categories, the state and the


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worker are separate; history connects them but only as adversaries"(ibid, 323). Reminding me ofFoucault's emphasis on the productivity of power, he continues and extends the debate to theissue of citizenship: "theoretically speaking, the processes through which modern classes areformed can be logically (and historically) shown to be inseparable from the process of theformation of the modern state... However, can one imagine a working-class organisation (e.g. a

trade union) functioning effectively without an adequate 'legal' space provided for it by the state;that is, without the "rights of association" that citizenship entails? Which is another way ofsaying that the struggle to form effective unions must be part of the struggle to forge a'democratic' state. ...Therefore, ...shop floor conditions are not produced in isolation from thelarger political history through which the state is formed...the formation of class formationcannot, hence, be separated from the politics of citizenship. (ibid, 326-327)

In this context I will outline some of the main parts of the historical context, that is the post-1980years in Turkey, in which my account can be located. I believe this will provide a betterunderstanding of what is told. After nearly two decades of import substitution industrialisation, itis stated that Turkey shifted to export oriented industrialisation. But the data shows that

industrialisation is given up altogether. In a way, Turkey seems to abandon industrialisationsince 1980. According to Kepenek (1999) the post 1980 industrialisation of Turkey had twomain dimensions: first of all, the state stopped investing in industry and decided to privatise itsindustrial establishments. Secondly, industrial investments and production were mainly left tofree market conditions. Public sectors retreat from industrial investment was notcounterbalanced by the private sector. The latters investment rate decreased in parallel to thedecrease in the public sector. Meanwhile, despite the fact that industrial investments were less,export of industrial products was reinforced by the state. Pre-1980 industrial establishmentswould be used in the export campaign. In fact, neither the quality nor the costs of industrialproduction were adequate to enter highly competitive global markets. However, state policies in

the post 1980 period assured export-oriented production: the real value of the Turkish Lira inrelation to foreign currencies was decreased through devaluations. Thus, demand from globalmarkets for products from Turkey increased. Low wages and subvention of agricultural productslowered domestic demand and labour costs. Tariffs and protectionism were lowered through aseries of agreements with the EU and GATT. Direct monetary support was provided to exporters.

While the state obtained the foreign currency it needed especially in the first decade, workerwages and rights were suspended for the sake of this goal and while global capital began to bemore available in Turkey through GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) and WTO(World Trade Organization), domestic de-industrialisation continued unabated. In a globalcontext, the Turkish economy seemed to adapt itself to the changes in the global economy in the

post 1980 period.

Advanced industrial countries lived a period of economic restructuring and social and politicaladjustments, which can be called a shift from Fordism to post-Fordism. This new regime ofproduction rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products andpatterns of consumption (Harvey, 1989; 147). Harvey says flexible accumulation appears toimply relatively high levels of structural (as opposed to frictional) unemployment, rapiddestruction and reconstruction of skills, modest (if any) gains in the real wage, and roll back of


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trade union power one of the political pillars of the Fordist regime. According toSwyngedouw (quoted in Harvey, 1989), changes concerning workers can be listed as such:

Fordist production Flexible productionsingle task performance by worker multiple tasks

payment per rate personal payment

high degree of job specialisation elimination of job demarcation

no or only little on the job training long on the job trainingvertical labour organization more horizontal labour organization

no learning experience on the job learning

emphasis on diminishing workers emphasis on workers co-responsibility

responsibility (disciplining of labour force)

no job security high employment security forcore workers (life-time employment).No job security and poor labourconditions for temporary workers.

Concerning the state in Post-Fordist production regimes, Jessop (1994) argues that it marks aclear break with the Keynesian welfare state as domestic full employment is downplayed infavour of international competitiveness and redistributive welfare rights take second place to a

productivist reordering of society. In no ways, can it be claimed that the Turkish economy ingeneral, and the factory in which I did my fielwork in particular adopted the ideal post-fordistproduction but changes concerning especially the unionised workers were apparently in themood of global developments.

Therefore, in a post-fordist moment, the Turkish state seems to be reluctant to positively meetworkers desires. The coup detat in 1980 both prepared the appropriate conditions for the newmoment and, connected with the previous statement, destroyed the conditions that would helpworkers to challenge new state policies. At the end of the 1970s, industrial workers in Istanbulwere relatively established in comparison to the contemporary situation. Domestic migration tourban areas was less and many workers had acquired a worker identity, some patterns of

collective worker life had appeared in those years (Baydar & Koray). But during the coup yearsand in the following period, all the activist elements of workers were persecuted by the state andoverwhelmed by the rising domestic migration. Migration created an unemployed labour pooland the labour force was juvenilized accordingly. It is interesting that all workers below 40 areconsidered young in Korays account whereas workers in my field called only those who aresingle and in pre-military age. In fact, they were also considered young in relation to the workercomposition of pre-1980 years. Therefore, my thesis, indirectly, attempts to demonstrate whatclaims and what limits workers as citizens have in the age of the weakening of the welfare state.


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Of Identity

In common sense usage the notion of identity has naturalist meanings that is, it means havingsome shared and estalished characteristics between individuals or in some groups ofindividuals. Those characteristics are essential to their bearers, they are unchanging and given.

But the recent increase in the use of the notion was accompanied with a critical approach to it. Incontrast to its traditional meaning (that is, all-inclusive sameness, seamless, without internaldifferentiation), discursive approaches propose that identity is an incomplete construction whichis constantly under revision. Identities are never unified; they are always fragmented in someaspects. They are constructed within discourse, within representations (Hall, 1996:5). Here, Itake the practice of blaming as an important fragment of identity construction. In one context,blaming managers targeted their preference of immigrant workers which would, some workersthought, empower the immigrant type of family while weakening their own families. On theother hand, some other workers would praise the immigrant families as an example to replicate.In another case, blaming managers would aim to make them aware of the expected reciprocitybetween all sectors of production in the workshop, in the restaurant or in the administrative

affairs within the factory.

Furthermore, Lockman points out another important point: However much we try to makethose categories and narratives complicated, contingent and provisional, we must in the end stillrelate some relatively coherent storykeeping in mind that it is to a large extent through thestories we tell about and to ourselves and others that much of the human social life is representedand grasped. Moreover, however it is important to problematize and deconstruct categories tofurther historical understanding, we must remember that in specific conjunctures people(ourselves included) often do define themselves in terms of some essence (ie. as workers,Egyptians, Muslims, women, African-Americans, Americans, citizens demanding their

constitutional rights, people endowed with human rights etc) and act collectively as relativelycoherent historical subjects. These categories are real because at times people act as if they arereal: they (we) live through these identities, see them as manifesting a sense of self andcommunity as well as a set of interests and sometimes even die for themIn other words, aninevitable tension between the commitment to an antiessentialist epistemological stance and thedeconstruction of stable categories and identities, on the one hand, and on the other hand, thecommitment to retrieving, reconstructing and making coherent the stories of actual workingpeople and their struggles, fashioned into a narrative of working class (ibid, xxvii). In my case,although workers have a heterogenous background, and there are no conditions to achieve aperfect group of homogeneous workers, I did construct a relatively homogenous narrative ofunionised workers under mostly the impact of union representatives.

Therefore, using these frameworks for theorising identity, a new theoretical field in whichworkers can be understood, may be launched. Here, the conceptualisation of workers as standardproletarians is abolished. All too coherent narratives of proletarianization and growing classconsciousness had subsumed workers multiple, ambiguous and unfinished stories and thus welost sight of the specificities of their lives, identities and practices. (Lockman ibid, 101). It is timeto retrieve what we lost. Moreover, a brief survey of workers practical history shows that wavesof migrants throughout the Middle East formed the industrial workforce in all through the last


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century and these workers always retained their past connections and modified them into newwebs of relations. In this sense, a worker entering the gates of a factory has already been loadedculturally and this load is used to negotiate with the putatively abstract capitalist disciplining offactory. But not only the past and present but also external connections, the new means of masscommunication the print media, radio, television, the audiotape player and the video cassette

recorder have all exposed them (like all other segments of society) to a commodified popularculture of competing metanarratives (see also Steinmetz, 1994) which will in the end affectidentities both within and outside the workplace

3. Another point against the possibility of an

abstract identification is that factory workers also serially or even simultanously engage inpetty trade or craft work or some other occupation (Lockman, ibid; xxiv). Some of the workerswhom I interviewed talked about their other part-time or weekend jobs. This is just another pointfor the inescapability of a multi sited understanding of the object of inquiry even if the fieldworkis performed in a single factory. In this context being a worker coexists and interacts with otherdiscourses of identity, and worker may have no significant meaning in some dominant socialand political forces espousing other forms of social identity. (ibid, 94) Thus, working-classidentity maybe one component, one subject position, within the subjectivity of those we label

workers, but it is unlikely to be the only or necessarily the most important one. (ibid, 77).

In my study I propose that in their very daily practices, workers act through two main identites:being a head of family and a unionised worker. It is not being only a worker but being aunionised worker that made sense in my case. Although these identites are peculiar to differentdomains, they are interrelated and they refer to each other in varying contexts. Moreover,workers located them in a particular statist and right wing position through the usage of a shiptrope. While this position made them refrain from leftist inclinations, it reinforced a large-scalecriticism of the state, portraying it as unfaithful to its subjects.

Porous Borders of Work and the Labour Process

Among others, feminist studies in labour history were prominent not only to challenge thedominant identifications of class and to dethrone male factory workers as the singlerepresentatives of workers but they were also effective in re-constructing the boundaries of workat the most general level. Joan Scott (1988)s work on garment workers showed that workersdefined themselves in terms that were, at once, economic, sexual and political. Representationsof family and gender were inevitably available in workers collective identification (a point thatcan also be seen in this thesis). She points out that scholars have tended to filter out thesesubjects and arbitrarily made an abstract notion of work the primary referent for the labourers

agenda, but it was not. Later Ava Baron (1991) has noted that labour history as a disciplinecontinued to think about some dichotomies such as capitalism/patriarchy, public/private,production/reproduction, mens work/womens work and class as issues that were peculiar to thefirst term in each pair. Although the critique was directed to the concept of class, it inevitablyforces one to think of the notion of work itself. Work cannot be taken for granted, it isengendered at least and its conceptualisation and practice works beyond the dichotomies ofindustrial/pre-industrial, capitalist/pre-capitalist, domestic/public etc.


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In another context, and specifically within the discipline of the anthropology of work, Nugent etal. (1992) question whether the distinctions between work, nonwork, labour, pleasure, desire, andperformance etc can be maintained. They emphasize that the labour process

4is also asocial

process, thus without paying attention to the aesthetic and narrative forms that are embedded inand shape both quotidian activities and production, the labour process cannot be understood.

Many studies on the labour process cannot/do not relate it to the non-economic sphere becauseonce labour is imagined as thoroughly dominated by economic forces, analysts have troubleconnecting it to everyday life (ibid, 5). But in practice as Wallman (1979:vi) states whilepreoccupations of work are directly concerned with the work of making a living, they areindirectly but equally concerned with the work of personal and social identity. In my case,personal and social identity are not only equally but also directly constructed at work. Workerstend to dismiss altogether identifying themselves with the unskilled and sometimes deskillingwork they do and turn towards the family to compensate in the domain of home the sense ofimpotence felt at work. Thus, their emphasis on making a living triggered identifications andcontestations at the personal, familial and sometimes national level. Their very daily problemssuch as job insecurity and the minimum wage forced them to hold a stance in national politics

including street politics, radical politics, education as the source of skill and upward mobility, ananti-immigrant stance etc.

Among many others, Comaroff and Comaroffs (1987) study of Tshidi peasant proletarians andChavezs study (1964) on rebellious Mexican peasants showed that work and construction of selfwere mutually embedded and the notion of work could not be reduced to an economisticunderstanding. In a more industrialised context, in fact in the heart of the metropolitan, Gramsci(1971) noted that for the gradual hegemony of managerial ideologies even the physical, sexualand imaginative being of those who worked was continually subject to the ordering ofinformation about production and interwoven with the fabric of social experience [quoted in

Nugent et al., p. 9]. Nugent et al. (ibid,9) noted that Gramscis notion of discipline implies thatthe ordering of subjectivities takes place not only in the production process but in everyday life.Hence a crude focus on labour/work as only the production of economic value situated in thework place misses how the practice of work and other activities are culturally constructed andhow they are continually contested and the fact that struggles continue over the boundaries andmeanings. Nugents work played an orienting position for my work by positing an understandingof the relationship between individual and collective identity and to my conceptualising thetransformative consequences of accommodation and resistance when they are regarded asrelational actions or processes rather than positional stances (Corrigan 1975 in ibid.187). Laborstudies teeming with resistance stories were certainly inspiring but they were also misleadingespecially in view of the very complex and intertwined mechanisms that were taking place.

Disappointment on my part in not grasping some acts of explicit or implicit resistance at thebeginning of my fieldwork were later overcome by thinking beyond the dichotomy of resistanceand accommodation. The strong sense of impotence, for instance, could be drawn as the sourceof rebellion or an example for capitalist hegemony but I belive it is more significant todemonstrate that it signified both in changing contexts. In the hands of union representatives itwas a tool to attack managers and even union leadership and this, in turn, helped their hegemonyover other workers.


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Backed by a renewed understanding of work and its overlaps with non-work practices, I couldbetter understand some events in the factory. For instance, during my initial visits to the factory,the worker representations were leading an aid campaign for the earthquake survivors in Dzce.Although those leaders were anxious and somewhat angry at the workers seemingly indifferenceto the campaign, I was surprised: How could they force the workers to give donations? The way

they called the workers was somewhat intimidating, and they called everybody one by one toparticipate in the campaign. More surprising for me was their feeling of righteousness in forcingothers to participate. Only very few workers could challenge that call. Later I heard thatdepartmental aid campaigns were routinely performed for fellow workers who have a new baby,get married or engaged or who face a trouble such as a serious illness or fire at home. Thus thepressing legitimating questionBiz Termal olarak depremzedeler iin ne yaptk? [What have wedone as Termal -the company that owns that factory- for the earthquake survivors?] becamemore understandable for me. The we in that question has connotations beyond the workingactivity itself.

The Male Worker Dethroned

Some words for my storys main actors: That is, male industrial workers. It is somewhatironic to make this category of workers my main actors: the male (white) industrial worker wasepitomised as the main and maybe the single subject-position of all labor studies and heroicnarratives concerning workers, until the beginning of the 1960s. Despite its instigating force fortheoretical innovations, even in E.P. Thompsons seminal book (1960) the modal worker was amale factory worker. Since then this subject position came under multifaceted attack. Forexample, feminist scholars stated that although female workers dominated many employmentsectors, especially in the textile trade, they were scarcely to be found in Thompsons account (J.

Scott, 1990).

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Ethnic and race studies were the only other most prominent areas in which the hegemony of themale factory worker was challenged. Later, studies in the mode of poststructuralism (only anexample) went further to undermine most of the fundamental tenets of labor studies. Criticism ofthe male worker hegemony went hand in hand with the critiques of pertinent and broaderconceptualisations. At least since the early 1980s, but certainly there are previous cases, even theconcept of class became questionable and now it seems that a study on workers needs to belegitimated.

The scholarly moment, then, when this thesis was being written has already witnessed the

dethroning of the male unionist industrial workers from being the classical representative ofworking classes in the capitalist period. Women, migrants, non-whites and many others are nowalso the objects/subjects of labor studies. Furthermore, the imaginary/geographical locationalattribution to the West has also shifted, or, lets better say, been deconstructed. The British case,which was the single exemple, lost its hegemony and historical inquiries took place focusing onother Western cases such as the French, German or American.

6This diversification seen in

historical accounts can also be transplanted to the contemporary period and other locations; thenon-Western contexts emerge as having a significant impact. Not only location, but more


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importantly that abstract, universal modernity attributed to the working class and to theirclassical representatives also lost its dominant position. Therefore in the time of writing thisthesis about workers, I do not have an essentialised subject position and moreover especially ifone looks from an orthodox marxist dimension - I do not have a teleological understanding, thatis, the objects of study will not have a set future to follow.

Not only the theoretical dethronment but also the eveyday practices in an urban setting weakensmale workers' hegemony. In contrast to Ecevits case (1991) there is not a clear cut genderedsegregation among the workers. All the work is accepted as deskilled work and especially amongunionist workers, men do not have a superiority due to the nature of their work. The nature ofwork is also effective in hindering any advantage that may accrue to seniority or youth (whichmay signify efficiency or productivity; see Rofel 1992). In fact, seniority may be adisadvantage as it causes higher wages through the increase in years of employment and as thework done is unskilled, workers with higher wages are in imminent danger of being fired. Or in acontext such as mine in which formally every worker is faced with the threat of being laid off intimes of crisis - and the crisis is permanent - some senior workers, may engage in an alliance

with the union representatives for the in-factory hegemony over workers. The continual practiceof laying workers off confirmed this possibility (nearly 1/3 of workers from all categories werefired within one year). This vulnerability of workers, of course has deleterious effects on themale worker. The ability to secure a livelihood for his family, an education for his children and agood name for all the members of his household which were all marks of success for a (village)man as Sirman points out, are also at play in an urban setting and in this context of vulnerabilitythey become sources of mens anxieties. Because they could not provide/perform the expectedmasculine roles properly, there were always expressions of sadness due to the inability to realisetheir masculinities and there were also the efforts to find new ways to deal with this agony.Surely, expressions of masculinity are never uttered (or can be?) explicitly, and they are always

covered with the general rule (see below). Thus, when I was annoyed by the level of generalityat which conversations were pitched, I was failing to understand that this was the manner,through which manhood was being performed. In fact, this point was already made in Sirmansaccount who says that: [in the village of Tuz] men and women construct reality in differentmanners. Men rarely talk about specific events within the history of their households or indeed ofthe village. Any question is usually answered in terms of the general rule (Bourdieu, 1977). Iam really surprised to see the perfect validity of that observation! Therefore, male workersaccount of and practices in a field of what can be called the politics of citizenship aresimultaneously acts of their gender identities.

Finally, the historical moment in which they live, the post 1980 years of Turkey, without doubt,

should logically prevent a positive and fatherly embodiment of the state, for the state is notoriousin curbing the many rights and freedoms it promises and it is seen very much as an accomplice ofthe owner of capital. However, it is still fatherly embodied through a discourse of impotence. Mythesis accounts for male workers novel strategies of empowerment and his efforts to positionhimself in a new map of identifications. The inevitable engagement of male workers with thestate, family and union under new economic policies always carries the quest of a newconfiguration of a masculine identity which is itself an in-built character of that engagement.


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Class, once again

Lockman (1994, 74-75) states that a particular theory of knowledge that makes a more or lessunambigous dichotomy between that which actually exists in the real world (in this case, a socialclass), on the one hand, and its (admittedly sometimes distorted or refracted) reflection in

consciousness, on the other underpinned an empricist understanding of class which retained itshegemony for a long period. Accordingly, class was understood as an entity that existed outthere in the real world. Hence it was objective and pregiven in external reality determiningthe rise of a specific consciousness. Even Thompsons formulation was trapped in thisobjectivism/positivism: objective relations to the means of production were to produce someexperiences which would be processed culturally to produce certain meanings (ibid, 76).Lockman says that, at this point, to the extent that this way of putting things does not insist thatall experience is already cultural, in other words, that there is no pure, direct experience that isnot already representation, hence socially determined, we are still, epistemologically speaking,within the realm of empiricism, if at its outermost regions.

Before Lockman there were also some other figures who tried to free the concepts of work andlabour process from the mainstream distinctions and their determined relation with the economicsphere and to situate them in the daily lives and point out their culturally constructions. Theirstudies had shown that even the economic activity itself was subject to cultural meanings. WhileSewell (1980, 1993) argues against the materialist rhetoric dominating labour history, he askswhether some very fundamental items for the economy such as money and advertisement canreally be confined to the domain of material. Money does not have a value in itself but it is asymbol and its value is defined in relation to other symbols and things. Similarly advertising is asymbolic representation of a commodity to potential customers. Furthermore, even theproduction process cannot be objectively determined. Because the productivity of machines is

not simply a function of their design and scientific efficiency; it also depends fundamentally onthe knowledge and morale of the labour force. At positions when the labour power issystematically alienated, productive activity is [still] culturally constituted and not productiveonly of economic value (Nugent et al.). Chakrabarty (1989) extensively discusses what Sewelland Nugent et al. treat briefly. According to him, rational needs relating to technology are alsodiscursively produced in particular historical conjunctures. For instance, Calcutta jute millersrefused to follow technological innovations that were relevant to their industry because theybelieved that as jute was cheaper than its would be substitutes, they would continue to preservetheir semi-monopoly on the jute sector and hence they would preserve their profits. Thiscollective belief among the mill owners led them to suppress labour more for maintaining thecheapness but they never attempted to renew their technology. In my case, there are also

examples of the culturally constructed aspects of labour process. Foremen appointments arearbitrary and they are not the result of technology and knowledge of machinery. Immigrantworkers are preferred by the management due to the belief that they are more industrious andobedient than the local ones. Similarly, the same belief makes local workers more exposed todismissals, which are not the result of a some kind of collected data about workers' productivityor cost for the company. Moreoever, although all workers are subject to the same kind of workpatterns, sources of agency for workers differ. Women workers, generally, do not depend onunion membership as a source of agency and in addition to factory work, they have to deal with


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the housework. Senior workers tell that young workers in their pre-military years are notinterested in union membership, but I did not see any attempt to relate them to the unionactivities. Still as far as I observed young workers have less attachment to workplace and a thirddomain consisting of their peer groups seems to occupy their daily lives.

From a slightly different angle but still in the same vein, Chakrabarty challenges the traditionalclass conceptualisations through a discussion of the problem ofeconomism. He defineseconomism as the tendency to construct class consciousness as a (pre)disposition in favorof economic-secular rationality and then to oppose to it the sentiments and identifications ofreligion, language, or other markers of what maybe called ethnicity. The latter are seen asinherently destructive of class solidarity. At this point, empowered by Joan Scotts work, thetraditional dichotomy between class and class-consciousness loses its vigour altogether. In factthey are the same thing they are political articulations that provide an analysis of, a coherentpattern to impose upon, the events and activities of daily life. (Scott 1990).

Before discussing what is left of class-consciousness after such critiques, let me add some other

and similar developments among labour historians. Many Marxist and non-Marxist scholarsmodified or challenged the uses of class and especially the supposed role that the economicsphere had played. For example, Sewell, without negating the role of changes in the worksituation, proposed that understanding the conditions of workers was not enough; one also had toobserve the cultural process in which new meanings were created (in Berlenstein, 1993: 4).Later, once a more conventional Marxist, Stedman-Jones, in one of his studies (1983), reversedthe roles and claimed that Chartism was the result of political discontent rather than economicdiscontent. (Berlenstein, ibid.: 4). Similarly and even going farther, William Reddy (1984)published a study on French textile workers and provided evidence for Sewells claims for theautonomy of culture. He left class analysis altogether and said that the conflict was of a

community strife rather than a class strife. According to him, the market was a cultural constructand the workers in the name of long standing cultural ideals such as family, honour andindependence opposed new ideas imposed by capitalists. Concepts deriving from 19 th centurysocialism were alien to the workers. In another context, Reddy (1987) also mentioned thedifficulty of defining a socially distinct set of individuals, united by some identifiable trait ortraits, as having shared intentions. There was the possibility to rework class analysis but therewere too many ways to carry out such an endeavour and that was making class lose its rigour asa category (ibid). In fact E.P. Thompson (1966) had long before mentioned the pre-industrialand communitarian values that were to become tools in the hands of workers against thecapitalists but the actors in his account were still thought according to their relations to the meansof production. Also Burke points out that Thompsons concept of moral economy was extracted

from the language of the Manchester School and all of the critiques that were directed againstthat school were valid for Thompson, too.

Lockman and Chakrabarty offer a new direction in understanding class and locate it in a newtheoretical framework. While both scholars share many common traits, I will concentrate on theformer scholar to emphasise how great a role the narrative/discursive dimension plays and hencetrivialises the centrality of class analysis without rejecting it altogether while the latter one willhelp me construct direct linkages with the state, citizenship and modernity. Those linkages will


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be dealt with later. What Lockman does is to treat class in a non-essential, non-reductionist(refraining from economism) and non-teleological way but positing at the same time itscontingent existence. For him, and I agree, it might be more productive to consider class not as aquestion of truth and falsity but as one of the competing representations of society, rooted indifferent premises and conducing to different consequences (Lockman, ibid; introduction). In

my case, at least a group of workers whom I worked with had a collective pattern of living, thatis they lived a particular class life. They lived mainly in two domains and despite individualdifferences they had the union membership and the position of leadership in their family thatempowered them against the de-humanising effect of their work. Moreover, despite somedifferences, they have a common anti-leftist, statist political stance. It is difficult to think ofcommonalities concerning all Turkish workers but among them, this small group of workersacted as a class.

In the following chapters, I use this theoretical framework to understand a group of male workerswhose identities are formed in conjunction with the capitalist labour process, unskilled work,individual life stories, two significant institutions that is the family and the trade union, and a

particular kind of masculinity. Moreover, I think of this theoretical combination under theconcept of agency. Throughout the fieldwork a sense of having or not having authority to act andpressures of desire to be powerful in decision making processes of daily life were so prevalentthat I have ordered the whole issue into a quest of agency keeping the theoretical issuesdiscussed above in mind.

The next chapter, "In the Field", provides a detailed description of the fieldwork I did. In thethird chapter, "Two Domains and a Trope", I discuss the two domains in which workers' lives aremostly spent and a trope, which governs their lives in these domains. In the fourth chapter, Ifocus on the union and union membership, which happens to be the most eventful position in the

work domain. In the fifth chapter, I focus on the discourse of blame, which operates as signpostsof workers' identities.

CHAPTER 2

In the Field

THE FACTORY

My fieldwork took place in a factory. There are many reasons for this choice. It is first of all aspace which epitomises its capitalist discipline temporally and spatially to the fullest degree.Consequently it is a place where the struggle between labour and capital unfolds in its mostconcrete and daily manner (Thompson, 1982). It would be an illuminating exercise to see to whatextent that panopticon view of the factory holds. In the end, it seems that my study challenges


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both Thompson and Burawoy (1979) in the context that even in the factory there is no abstractruling of capitalismbut broader metanarratives are at play. Moreover, there were fewethnographic studies

7and still, with some exceptions, they seemed to be descriptive and inspired

from some western models rather than being informed by a sense to understand the local in itsown specificity. Thus, I believed an ethnographic study for the concerned subject was legitimate.

Another reason for fieldwork in a factory, was my personal conviction that scholars in Turkeyare more interested in seemingly more abnormal or deviant forms of work such as theinformal economy in general, and such as the small producers that would disappear through thedevelopment of capitalism or that would be contained by the formal economy.

8Meanwhile, the

labour force in the factories, especially the unionised ones seem to be taken for granted. It is as ifthere is nothing to know more about them, they are successful parts of the modernisation projectbut the problem is that some others like peasants or small producers are obdurately available,hence they get further attention. Also in common sensical usages, the word ii [worker] doesnot mean the lower part of the social structure. Especially unionized workers are seen to bewealthy in relation to others in the lower classes. Therefore, workers sometimes do not seem to

be in a subaltern position in common sense and in scholarly works alike.

The factory belongs to the Istanbul plant of Termal A.. This company has two plants. The otherplant is in anakkale and it produces ceramics. One of the six buildings in the Istanbul plant isreserved for the marketing of Termal ceramics. But the other five buildings and the Istanbul plantin general is for manufacturing spare parts. These spare parts include transformers for televisions this forms the biggest amount of production bobbins (mostly for televisions again), lightersfor ovens, kerosene stoves and water heaters, radio assembling for cars, remote control operators,injections. Currently most of the production is sold toBeko, a subsidiary company ofKoConglomeration.Arden andProfilo-Pekare other significant domestic customers of Termal.

Besides, despite recent decreases in exports, Termal continues to sell its products to someGerman customers.

As I have just written the Istanbul plant consists of six buildings spreading over an area of nearly20,000 square metres. A street divides the plant into two parts. On the one side (the left side)there are four buildings and on the other side (on the right) there are two. One of four buildings isfor ceramic marketing and I had no interest in it. Four of the remaining five buildings areproduction sites and I visited all of them. On the left, three of those buildings are built side byside. In addition to main gates for every building, there are internal gates so that one can movefrom one building to another without going outside. In the first building (I will describe themfrom north to south), the first floor has a big warehouse. On the second floor, there is an

assembly line for small transformers. The third floor has an assembly line and workbenches forbobbin wrapping. The fourth floor is the site for radio assembling. In the next building, the firstfloor consists of the extension of the warehouse and casting workshops. The other three floors(every production building has four floors) have lighter production units, repairing and castingateliers, and assembly lines and finally the quality control unit. In the next (third) building, thefirst floor has a machine park (not operated at the moment) and on the second floor, there areagain assembly lines especially for bobbin wrapping. The Research&Development unit is also on


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this floor. On the third floor there is the restaurant and on the fourth floor there are dressingrooms and the union room.

On the right side, opposite the third building, there is the fourth production building. On the firstfloor transformers for export are produced. On the second floor there is a machine park and an

assembly line for bandaged cables for televisions. On the third floor, there is a warehouse and thefourth floor is reserved for lighter production.

On the north of the right side there is a small (in relation to other bigger buildings) administrativebuilding. Marketing, personnel, accounting, export-import and doctors offices are located in thisbuilding. Between the fourth production building and the administrative building there is asmaller building reserved for meetings with important customers and spaces for basketball andvolleyball playing (few workers play basketball but volleyball is played a lot). Besides there is anunused open area.

The location of the factory (Sefaky) was near my house although I had never gone in that

direction before. I went there by bus in 20 minutes in different days and at different times of theweek. The personnel manager of the factory gave me the official permission to visit the factory.

MALE WORKERS

As I already stated, working with male workers already was scholarly interests. But there arealso some practical reasons: First of all, I felt that I would have more access to male workersthan female ones as a male researcher. In fact, this is not only due to a feeling, it is also partly

due to the field stories that I have heard from several sources. Also it is part of the practicalknowledge I got as I am living in the same society with the workers. Although I was sincerelywelcomed by the workers in general, in practice communication with male workers was mucheasier and substantive.

Another reason for choosing male workers is their relative under-representation in the studies onworkers. Although they form 81.4 % of the waged labour force (according to the State Instituteof Statistics, in 1996) as far as I could find, there were few studies focusing on them. Instead,studies on women workers continued to dominate. This is related with the general rise ofsensitivity on womens rights in the past decades and the particular exploitation based on gender.

Women workers were the objects of study in Ong (1987), Rofel (1992), Ecevit (1991), Koray(1999), whose works provided me a sense of the ethnography of work in the initial stages of mythesis preparation. Instead, along with practical reasons, I was curious about how male workersunderstood their work and how they react to heavy exploitation. In fact, those male workersrefused to think directly about their (unskilled) work, which seldom provided them with a senseof identity and preferred to be involved in a unionist discourse which includes a series ofcomplaints for not having been able to exploit the rights they have.


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There are eight managers in the factory: the general director and managers for personnel,finance, export-import, purchase, quality control, production and research and developmentwhose offices are located in the administrative building.

At the beginning of 1999, there were 629 workers in the factory (I have excluded and will

exclude 23 administrative employees from all numbers I give. As far as I know there was nochange in the number of the administrative personnel). One year later, there were 348 workersand at the end of June 2001 there were 288 workers (the last number includes 46 workers of anew department bought by the company this year). 150 of these workers were male workers. 129(62 of them are male) workers were fired from the first day of 2001 to the end of June 2001.While there were 430 unionised workers at the beginning of 2001, there are 136 unionisedworkers at the moment. 64 of the unionised workers are male.

All workers qualified as skilled are non-unionised. The company offers higher wages if they donot join the union and none of them join. All foremen, department chiefs, managers and alladministrative employees, all employees in the injection and mechanic ateliers are qualified as

skilled workers and are non-unionised.

Being skilled and unskilled is not related with the level of education. Foremen are mostly chosenfrom those who had a process of apprenticehip after primary school. Only those immigrants fromBulgaria are assumed to be skilled although they are all high school graduates in general.However as I will explain in the next chapter, the nature of work does not really require abackground of a similar work experience. A combination of good connections with managers,being obedient and industrious worker (that is mostly the reason managers prefer immigrantsince they are assumed to have that characteristics), being male and a senior enough to rule overworkers is sufficient to be a foreman.

9Nearly 70% of foremen graduated from primary school.

They became skilled at work after primary school. Only the immigrant foremen from Bulgariagraduated from high school. There are also a few mechanical engineers who have universitydegrees. All administrative employees are high school graduates or higher institutions.

There are three union representatives: Ali Rza is the chief and Erdoan and kran are hisassistants. Ali Rza is allowed legally to have 3 hours free in a day within working hours to payattention for worker problems. Erdoan and kran have a total of 3 hours in a week. But usuallythey spend more time without working and without much fear of penalty. Union representativesare also unskilled workers and their source of income is the wage they get from the company.The union does not pay them an extra wage. Their most important legal advantage is that thecompany cannot fire them. Only if the union dismisses them from their position, can the

company fire them. Most of their time passes in the union room.

Among male workers there are differentiations based on age, geographical origin or unionmembership that prevents us from thinking of a homogeneous working class. In the case of age,an important factor is whether the person has already done military service or not. Another factoris whether one is married or not. In fact, age is interwoven with these rites of passage. Seniorworkers assume that a young worker mostly feel work responsibility only after military service.


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It is again at this time, that's after military service, that one begins to think of marriage. Hencework responsibility becomes very much related with family responsibility.

Mehmet10

said,Before the military service, one does not care much about anything, for there seems to be no

problem at all. And, one does not want to care either. In fact, society going worse, because welike westernisation that much today. Today the young generation leads a degenerated life,thinking of nothing but fun. But when one returns from the military duty, and when one learnsthe hardship and discipline there, one has to change immediately. You will ask why. Because onehas no more an excuse or an obstacle that may impede one. Before the duty, for example, onemay say that it is not much use to start working or establish some kind of work even if one hascapital and opportunities, because the military duty will interrupt. So, one may say that it isbetter to live as one pleases till one goes to the military duty. After the completion of the service,he decides that he should marry, and he needs things to get married, therefore he has to makeinvestments. And this urges him to get wiser and get settled. His military service is nowcompleted, and he is married and he has a family to take care of, therefore he needs to be

wiser.Either in the factory or in the workplaces, he can take on full responsibility of his work, atleast.

Young male workers are not expected to be responsible in the organisation of relations within thefactory and in practice they are usually not interested in negotiations between the managementand the union or (directly) with the workers. As an example, they were criticised once in theunion room anonymously because a group of young workers preferred to go the cinema insteadof attending an important union meeting. Their "irresponsibility" is a usual point of reference bysenior workers who are heads of families. The main outcome is thus their exemption from anyissues of governance among workers. In fact, this attribution of irresponsibility is shared by the

management and senior workers. Although there is a high degree of arbitrariness in dismissals,these young male workers are more exposed to dismissals. Their relative majority among theworkforce means that a major group of workers are excluded from the decision makingprocesses.

It should be noted that young female workers are subject to a different regime of power. Unlikethe male ones, this much smaller group of workers must be "responsible". From the outset 'ourgirls' invest for the future.

Again, Mehmet said,And today our girls are wiser, too. They are more responsible than their matches had been

before. More responsible, and you know why, they think of their future, they get prepared fortheir wedding, they invest. Men do not have the same line of thought.. We have been through thesame period too, when we were young. And I dont mean to blame them, but I say this becauseTurkey is not headed for the good.

Immigrant status can be another divisive factor. Especially since work does not for otherreasons act as a source of identity or position, being immigrant can produce what work mighthave produced otherwise. In Sefaky, where the factory is located, there is a significant number


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of immigrant Turks from Bulgaria. Although no worker I interviewed is from Istanbul, onlythese are assumed to begmens. In fact waves of migration from Bulgaria took place but theone in question is the last one that happened at the end of the 1980s. Others whose parents' andgrandparents' origins can be traced back to Bulgaria through previous migration waves, do notidentify themselves asgmen (immigrant). This might be because of its pejorative usage and

being a target of anger by non-immigrant workers. But in my opinion this is not the sole reasonfor their act. Recent immigrants existence entail the existence of a different labor discipline, adifferent family life and at most general a different life style while previous ones had beenintegrated into the rest of the population. Thus, like non-immigrants, previous immigrants cannotthink of a common identity with immigrants. Besides, there is no singlegmen characterisation.I will deal with these characterisations in another chapter.

Another divisive factor is being a union member or not. This is interwoven partly with beingskilled as the firm does not allow skilled workers to join the union as noted above. Still, someunskilled workers also did not join it. All those non-unionised workers are called memurs.Memurs are non-unionised employees. The word, memur, is pejoratively used by the union

members to imply that those who refrain from becoming a union member cannot attain the socialstatus/ job security the real memurs, that is, government employees, have. In fact memurs aremostly administrative employees who can be classified within the service sector. However, thereare also a significant number of industrial workers. Some of them are those who left the unionand some who never joined the union. Here I would just like to focus on foremen. They must benon-unionised (worker representatives always regret that the union accepted managementsdemand that foremen must not be unionised), and hence they are also called memurs. Arbitraryappointment of foremen by managers and their relative abundance is another divisive factor. Onecan easily become a foreman and then a lay worker; one can be unionised and then a non-unionised worker, or vice versa. There is no need for prior formal training to become a foreman.

Foremen are chosen among workers. Most of them are chosen from among immigrants but non-immigrants are also eligible. Some graduated from high school and some did not. Managersdecide who the foremen will be. Thus sometimes good relations with a manager may lead tobecoming a foreman.

UNSKILLED WORK

Unskilled work: all the assembly line workers are unskilled.They line up before a an assembly: one screws up, one putson the cable, one controls, one puts it in the box, one checks

the transformator, one does the labeling. These are montageworkers. The one who controls them is the foreman. But thereal skilled workers work in lathes, moulders workingmechanics workshop... And most of our friends whouse..the machine or who work at injection are skilled, too.But, they are not much educated, either. (Erdoan, unionrepresentative).


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Unskilled work is neither desired nor practically possible without discontinuities. A few workershad been working in the same factory for nearly 10 years. Thus a worker can maintain his/herposition as much as this period. But the problem is that to become a non worker is an ever-existing possibility (and that worker who was working for nearly 10 years was indeeddismissed). Seniority in a workplace cannot prevent that possibility. Accidental entrance to the

workplace

11

, no job security against dismissals, arbitrary rule of management, simultaneity andpossibility of other types of work while working in the factory all lead to workers being rendereddispensable tools in the hands of management. This condition of workers is an obstacle for themto think of a collective imaginary based purely on their work.

Before working in the factory, all the workers I interviewed worked in non-industrial settings.Some of them, from time to time had part-time non-industrial jobs while working in the factory,and most of them plan/desire to have their own businesses in the future. For example, Mehmetworked in a restaurant as a waiter and in a supermarket, Ali Rza, the senior union representativeworked as an apprentice at an electricity repair shop and Hseyin

12in his fathers dairy farm

before taking up a job in the factory.

While working in the factory, Mehmet worked at wedding halls as a photographer and videofilmer at weekends. (He began to work as a courier in a private postal service after he wasdismissed from his job in the factory). For a short while, Erdoan became a taxi driver. Anotherworker, lhan

13, worked in a restaurant at weekends. And some others worked as pedlars

including those who sold sandwiches in coffee-houses in the evenings. Sometimes extra-workmay provide a higher source of income than the normal salary. The cameraman says there areless wedding ceremonies after the earthquake. There were seven weddings in a week two yearsago. I was earning more than my wage. Now there are fewer weddings. I may work in a betterwedding hall. This case even further undermines the significance of industrial work for forming

a stable worker identity. Another point is that extra work may be related to the agenda of family.For example, lhan ceased working in restaurants when he finally finished building his ownhouse, that is, at the end of completing a significant source of expenditure:

On Friday you leave work, and at the weekend continue to work all night and day, withouthaving rest. Then how efficient you can be on Monday. You earn your life here, too. There is acertain number that you have to reach. But when there is any need, you have to do extra work.But I have given up doing it now. Thanks God.

However, one should also not forget that although wages are low, factory work provides a steadyincome and also social rights that extra work cannot have. In most of the cases, workers would

continue work if they were allowed. But dismissals prevent long term working opportunities.

For the future, having one's own business is an ideal goal. In fact, this is omnipresent ambitionamong workers but due to lack of capital, it is postponed to a later, not clearly defined date: lhansays,

If I had the opportunity, I would start a trade work. Why? Because at least we will have a workof our own.


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You dont have capital to start a business at the moment?Exactly. Suppose you have decided to open up a store, the rents and taxation are increasingmadly. What can you do in such a situation? When you become a tradesmanship, you will notexpect any profit for about two years. You have to depend on other sources of income because, ifyou use these sources for the store, you ruin it too.

Erdoan, the union representative, was quite certain about the date and the kind of business hewanted to start. His capital would be the money he receives when he retires and he hopes to setup a small haberdashery shop.

Like the unstable and changeable character of personal working life histories, unskilled workitself has similar characterisations. For lhan, what one does is changeble and one has to adapt toit. However, these attributions do not mean that there is no human suffering usually goingunnoticed:

Is your present work tiring?So so. Neither too tiring nor too light.Is it boring? Do you do the same thing all the time?Usually you do the same thing but if there are few workers in your department then you have totake care of other things as well. Because of the routine allocation of workers to differentdepartments, there can be changes in where you work. But when you work from eight to six,your body adapts itself to it. For example, one who is used to working on chair, goes through realtrouble when he is forced to work on foot in a new job. Or vice versa.Do you have such a problem?I used to work here at the warehouse. You know, you have to run here and there at such a workfrom morning to evening. Then how can you get yourself to working on the chair? But you get

used to it as well.

In fact, although uttered clearly, the listener, that is me, waits for a more explicit and prolongeddiscourse on the bitterness of work, like the ones he had read in his literature research, only tomiss the points made. Instead, what unionised workers do in general is to channel the discussionsfrom the work per se to issues of union and maltreatments going on in the factory. Thus, the socalled adaptation process, which is almost against human nature, is overlooked.

Accordingly, although there are different departments in the factory, the management classifiesall under the same title of unskilled work and constantly re-allocate workers into thesedepartments. In the light of the above examples what Aykut

14says summarizes how an unskilled

worker identifies himself his work in the factory. He seems to internalize this only grudginly.Since his work is unskilled, this is inevitable:

We do all kinds of work. We are now classified as unskilled workers. We dont have anyexpertise, we do anything. At the warehouse, I learned how to use the computer. Nobody wantedto work in this department. I was working with stylist buddies, I gave it up and I came here. Ihave been in 8 or 10 departments. And the last one is here. My job is very good at the moment. I


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cannot find the same conditions in any other place. But if there is need, I can work any where,for I am married, I am not on my own. I have a daughter who is two months old.

In another context, Erdoan gives more information about the work. According to him, there isno need for prior education for doing this kind of work. Work in the factory equalizes all workers

who with backgrounds and renders them into an undifferentiated labor force. Erdoan says,

Generally there is unskilled work and assembly line here. There are many high school graduatesat the moment. They accept to work here because of the unemployment problem. It differs onlyif you are graduated from a vocational highschool, there is no difference in wage, but if there isany work that needs skill, then where you are graduated from may matter. Otherwise, there is nodifference between primary school graduates and highschool graduates.

Then he tells his own work story:I did extra work, too. I did bobbin winding. I wound transformer bobbin. My job was ontransformators. But here I have nothing to do with that job. Here I worked first on the regulators

then I wound up bobbin. Then I worked on things about DST. Now, there are the life-tests oftransformers. I do the daily and monthly checkings (control, ya da). And I also explore why thejunk is out of order and I write reports.

Erdoans account gives several clues about the nature of work. First of all, he shows that workhas a de-skilling character. Many skilled workers accept to be employed in such work because ofthe need to survive. Secondly, he implies that skill can be calculated by level of education. Infact this is one way Erdoan and some other workers criticise the state as will be seen in thefollowing chapters. According to them, children of workers and other poor people can notcontinue their education because of the lack of adequate income and thus they remain unskilled

and therefore they cannot be upwardly mobile. On the other hand, as I quoted in the previoussection, he also accepts that skill can be acquired even if one is only a primary school graduate.According to him most of the foremen who are non-immigrants are skilled although they areprimary school graduates while immigrant foremen are mostly high school graduates. However,the general mood is to make a positive correlation between education and skill and one morecriticism that emerges from this mood is that education in Turkey does not have practicalconcerns and thus less skill than expected is acquired in the process of education. The Bulgarianstate offers a degree including skill for work whereas the Turkish system of education does notcontain skilling, and one has to leave school and join a process of apprenticeship. Thirdly,another point can be derived from Erdoans account: Unskilled work can be constructedwithout deskilling. Most of the workers who are called unskilled did not go through a process of

obtaining a skill before. As far as I observered all the workers I interviewed began their factorywork as unskilled workers and continued to work in the same capacity. Some of them also neverbecame masters but only apprentices in their sweatshop or some kind of artisan jobs outside thefactory. Here at stake is not losing a previously obtained skill, but to be denied that one isacquiring a skill while a worker learns new techniques like computer using. What can bemaintained however, is that no matter what a worker does on the job, his stake as an unskilledworker is maintained throughout his working life unlike the rather simple dichotomy drawnbetween fordism and post-fordism in the introduction.


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METAL WORKERS AND THE TRADE UNION

In the beginning of the fieldwork, I had no intention of making a connection with the tradeunion. But when I began to think about how to access to workers, I realized that access through aunion would be better. I did not know any workers and even if I had known some and got theirhelp to establish connections with a wider group of workers, I thought, it would be very difficultto freely visit the factory. My father and also some other friends would help me connect withsome managers or factory owners, but I thought if I had access to workers through themanagement, this would really put me in a suspicious position. I would be seen as a kind ofagent working for the management. So I decided for the option of the trade union. It is alegitimate worker organization that a management would not explicitly oppose and workers willbe less suspicious about me. Of course, access through the union would affect the workers to beless critical of the union and my fieldwork has in fact been shaped by union politics to a large

extent. But I think this situation does not seriously challenge my theoretical framework.Meanwhile, I was anxious about whether I would be permitted by the management to do thefieldwork. Although I attempted to outline what my aim was, the personnel manager categorisedme as an engineering student who wants to do internship for a while and I was listed with otherengineering students. I learnt that in previous years, engineering students from BoaziiUniversity had visited the factory. But during my fieldwork I did not meet any of those students.Since there is no visible unrest since the union change, the management seemed to be lesssuspicious about someone like me, by the union.

Industrial workers in any industry would have served my purposes. After a period of searching,

the Istanbul branch of Z ELK- Union [True Steel Work Union], a member of a slightlyright wing conservative confederation of unions HAK-, helped me find a factory to do myfieldwork. Z ELK- was established in 1976 for workers in steel work, iron work, metalgoods manufacturing and the automotive sector. In 1994, it advocated the transfer ofKarabkIron & Steel Factories, which the State planned to privatise, to workers in 1994. Throughout thelast decade it organised many campaigns against privatisation, which would affect its membersin the public sector. From time to time the union issues bulletins, and since April 2001 it beganto issue a monthly magazine, in which one of Erdoans essays was published.

All members of Z ELK-, in very general terms, can be classified as metal workers. It wasnot my aim to look for a specific industry that had some particular characteristics. But in the end

I found out that metal workers formed one of the biggest sectors of the Turkish labour force:according to the Ministry of Work and Social Security, metal workers were % 12.2 of the totallabor force in 1998, second in rank after construction workers (statistics taken from etik &Akkaya, 1999). Also it is said that the first workers organisation Osmanl Amele Cemiyeti wasestablished in 1894 by metal workers (Trk-Ar, 1995). Since the last decades of the OttomanEmpire, metal workers had a significant place in workers history through their organisations andactivities (Trkiye Sendikaclk Ansiklopedisi

15, v. 2, pp. 405-410). Unionisation rate (77,33 %) is

above the national average (69,39 %) according to the 1996 statistics of the Ministry of Work


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and Social Security. Still there are more than 200,000 non-union members and it is argued thatsubcontracting is the most important threat against unionisation (TSA, ibid).

The union officials and especially the union representatives who happened to be the closestworkers to me considered my work as an opportunity to make their opinions known. They were

very helpful in finding workers whom I wanted to interview, making the union room availablefor interviews, delivering to me every document, book and magazine that they had or that Iwanted, making contacts with the union officials or managers. In fact, in previous years, they hadencountered with other scholars who visited them or whom they attended their seminars. kran,the union representative, told me that she attended Meryem Koray's seminars for womenworkers. They also hosted some leftist journalists especially at the time of transfer to Hak from Trk . So they were somewhat familiar with the academy and the media. My concernwith daily practices coincided with their concern to express their daily problems to a broaderpublic. Thus although I insisted that I was only at the beginning of an academic career, theycontinue to treat me as a full-scale scholar. However, I must insist thw workers and the unionrepresentatives I had most contact with, did not try to impress upon one or another particular

view. They related their own views during the interviews and for the rest of the time, left mepretty much alone to do my own observations. I was given freedom to move and work within thefactory. In fact, they believed that explicit attempt to influence somebody like me would haveunwanted consequences and they prefered to be self-criticising.

METHODOLOGY

I visited the factory -irregularly- for more than two years. I attended the preparation of aid

campaigns, trade union meetings, meals breaking the fast, iftar(in the month of Ramadan),problem solving activities, some leisure time activities such as playing football, going to caf etc.I listened to the debates going on during a prolonged process of collective bargaining; I observeda new addition to existing departments and consequently new recruitment activity to the union; Iwitnessed one case of sexual harassment; I was involved in a campaign for earthquake survivorsand the struggle on the timing ofiftarduring the holy month of Ramadan.

The union room

Despite my unexpected freedom of movement, most of my hours in the factory were spent in the

union room. I was anxious not to distract workers since this would have a negative consequencefor their job security. Even if I had attempted to spend more time in the workbenches, I guess,workers would reject my proposals since they were afraid of being dismissed. All in-depthinterviews and most of the conversations consequently took place in this room. It was theheadquarters of union activity and it is certain that workers undertook a harder unionist positionwhile in the room although we were alone during the interviews.


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An Alevite leftist radio channel was always on (while the worker population was mostlyimmigrants from the Balkans and union representatives were inclined to the far right); there werefrequent services of tea and coffee and workers wandered in and out especially at lunch time andengaged in never ending conversations mostly orchestrated by the most senior unionrepresentative, Ali Rza. His already colloquially politicised manner of talking was bein

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Blaming Others: Agency Among Unionised Unskilled Workers

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