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TRADE UNIONS and THEIR SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVE FUTURE
Mehmet Saim AŞÇI1
1İstanbul Medipol University, Business School, İstanbul, Turkey
Corresponding author:
E-posta:msasci@medipol.edu.tr
Abstract
In a time when change is accelerating and an awareness that dictates that values and organisations to
be reconsidered, and the concepts of the industrial society such as workmanship and employership are being re-
studied as phenomena that change with new transitions, union managers too clearly state the need for restructuring.
Due to technological development, the rate of white-collar workers in the workforce has risen against the
blue-collar workers. An important change that has been a factor and a result of the change in economic prosperity
and transition to high technology has been the rise of average levels of education and learning. The workforce,
comprised mostly of highly-skilled white-collar workers who are better educated than previous generations and
possess a higher income level, has seen a change in attitude and behavior in the matters of unionization and labor
struggle. In addition to this, business managements also develop management techniques such as human resources
management that enable employees to participate, and develops conict free relationships by establishing a direct
dialogue with employees with applications such as quality circles, team work and satisfaction surveys. Trade
unions are required to create new organizational structures to satisfy the needs of rapid change in technology and
the new position of the workforce with knowledge.
On the other hand, developments in the aftermath of the 1980s led to neo-liberal policies taking over
the whole world. Dismissals under the name of exible labour market, subcontracting, precarious work and
unregistered employment are becoming more and more common. The working class has lost the benefits it gained
through organized struggle. In the face of the fact that traditional trade union organization is constantly weakening,
it is a necessity to discuss alternative searches.
If the workers’ unions will exist in the future, it will be extremely diicult for them to achieve this with
their current traditional identities. In this respect, the time for the workers’ unions to create a new vision is long
overdue. In this study, a conceptual study on alternatives for the future vision search of unions will be presented.
Keywords: Trade unions, Unionism, Workforce, Neo-Liberalism, Flexible Labor Market
1. INTRODUCTION
The fact that the laborers started to organize in the 20th century and both the acceleration and the
ourishment of this development led to trade unions rising all around the world and becoming a force
that protects labor against capital. Thanks to this empowerment, the rights of the labourer have been
secured a little more. The right to strike has improved the power of labor thoroughly.
However, with developments after the end of globalization and the Cold War, even countries
with a high tendency to unionize traditionally did not have a rising rate of unionization in the 80s when
neo-liberal policies took over the whole world.
Continuous contraction in employment, exible employment forms, the increase of women
- young workers among white-collar workers due to technological developments, the threats by
Multinational Companies to employees about shifting prodution to foreign countries, the silence of
the working class in negative situations for fear of losing their jobs, the indierence for traditional
unionization in labor-heavy fields such as agriculture and construction, small business climate being
Uluslararası Turizm, İşletme, Ekonomi Dergisi
International Journal of Tourism, Economic and Business Sciences
E-ISSN: 2602-4411 2(2): 367-371, 2018
368 M. S. Ascı / IJTEBS, 2 (2): 367-371, 2018/Proceeding of ICTEBS
incompatible for union organization, policies against the laborers, legislations against unions, exible
and precarious work, informal work, the failure of unions that insist on using traditional union policies
to develop new forms of struggle and organization policies have resulted in the majority of laborers
distancing themselves from unionized organization and the reduction of faith and trust put into unions.
The decline in the trade union orientation of the workers that began to intensify since the 1980s
caused the discussion focused on the future of the unions. Whether unions will exist in the future is one
of the main issues of evaluations today.
2. RELATED LITERATURE
According to Akpınar (2016), it is sensible that the working class, who has lost its gains from
the organized struggle, discuss the search for alternative organizations and a healthy analysis of the
process of disunionization on the way to new searches on the subject of trade union organization is also
essential. According to lipietz (1982), it is important that local reality is not ignored in these studies.
According to Centel (1996) it is diicult to say that, despite the diiculties of the labor unionism
today, it is completely eliminated or that it will be. It is an undeniable fact that workers’ unions are aected
by change to a certain extent. Therefore, however, it can be said that the trade unionism movement has
experienced a change of understanding and structure. Indeed, this situation is not a fall in the crisis of
the workers unions in change, but a fall of the diiculties brought by the diiculty of complying with
changing conditions.
According to Dereli (1975), union leaders in Turkey are generally seen to be leaders rising from
the bottom. According to Koray (1992), it is seen that union leaders from the workers’ base are very
successful in terms of their pragmatic choices and problems, as well as the working conditions of the
unionized workers. However, in order to achieve long-term goals for the trade unionism movement,
this situation also creates disadvantages from time to time. Social goals, from a more comprehensive
policy point of view, are not the same success of the union leaders from the grassroots. According to
Bingöl (1990), it is observed that the workers’ unions have successfully exercised their right to strike
and bargain collectively, but are indierent to unorganized workers.
According to Davis (1988), unions often do not respond adequately to individual needs; for
example, the idea of individual dierences disappears within the demands of standardization, uniformity
and equality in all aspects of trade unions. In the face of pressures that want everything to be considered
from a global perspective, problems turn into statistical symbols to be solved in central oices, while
individuals are forgotten in a corner. According to Koray (1992), particularly white-collar workers are
heavily inuenced by their middle class values and individualist approach and they are often indierent
to unions. According to Krasucki (1987), a unionism that takes into account what the employees are and
how they feel, is required.
In this context, the “stakeholder” and “organization” strategies, which have key dierences
among them, have been proposed by various thinkers in order to revive the unions.
According to Kelly (2004) the concept of stakeholder can be seen as essentially a pursuit for a
“collaboration” or “mutual win” between labor-capital or between workers-employers. Employers have
adopted stakeholder strategies in order to prevent strikes and similar collective actions and to create a
exible workforce with a non-conict working environment.
The trade unions, on the other hand, have shown tendency towards the stakeholder strategy
to strengthen the conditions of business security and the union orientations of employees, and for the
prospect of having a say in business strategies. Ackerse and Payne (1998) emphasise that trade unions
aim to expect a better wage and better working conditions through their stakeholder engagement.
According to many thinkers, the practices carried out in the context of stakeholder strategy are
M. S. Ascı / IJTEBS, 2 (2): 367-371, 2018/Proceeding of ICTEBS 369
intensively and predominantly in favor of employers (Bacon and Storey, 2000; Guest and Peccei, 2001;
Kelly, 2004; Kesslee and Purcell, 2003; Waddigton, 2003). According to Kelly (2004), the stakeholder
relationship did not meet the expectations and improvements in neither job security nor other work
areas. According to Brown (2000) stakeholder practices have led to the already weakened trade unions
becoming weaker. According to Kılıç (2016), the output of the discourse of the partnership has never
revealed a view for the workers and the trade unions.
According to Visser (2006) since the 1980s, trade unions have been losing members in almost
all over the world. According to Kelly (1998), the main reasons for these member losses are the
irregularities created by state policies, the intensification of employer resistance and the contraction
in the mobilization capacity of the unions. According to Bronfenbrenner (2009) and Gall (2004), a
large number of workers wanted to join the union in this process, but were denied membership – even
losing their jobs as a result. According to Robinson (2008), workers’ need for unions have increased
tremendously. The stakeholder strategy failed to meet the expectations of the workers. According to
Kelly (1998), the main reason employees become union members is not to co-operate with employers in
better terms, but to protect themselves from employer’s injustice.
According to Tilly (1978) organization is the most basic form of representing the common
interests for trade unions. Because the organization mainly involves centralization of the field of power
and representation. The organizational strategy is based on the emphasis on workplace injustice and
conicting interests, contrary to the stakeholder strategy based on common interests.
According to Kılıç (2016), it should not be expected that trade union revival can be achieved
solely with the adoption of the organizational strategy. The success of the organization is directly
linked to the strength of the unions. The implementation of the organization strategy by supporting
some additional strategies (social movement unionism, trade union mergers, open-source unionism,
community unionism) will also contribute positively to the success of the strategy.
3. METHOD
In this study, the eects of change on unions, the diiculties faced by the traditional model of
organization and the unions’ search for vision against these eects; the fact that the insecure working
practises that have become common due to neo-liberal policies making union organization more diicult,
despite creating the need for such unions, and the possibilites created by the rising awareness among the
middle class despite frauds impeding unionization among such employees will be investigated.
In this study, the related studies for the last 10 years will be examined in detail. In this
conceptually designed study, it will be discussed whether new developments in trade union operations
can be possible.
4. CONCLUSION
The unions can inuence the established economic and social order and announce their weight
in society by means of the vast numbers of members and their wealth and the strike/lockout powers
granted to them.
However factors such as some eects stemming from the change in the workforce structure as
well as the subcontracting brought by neo-liberal policies, exible and insecure work practises becoming
more common, the disunionizing policies of employers and the fact that the unions are becoming more
and more distant to their members reduce the faith and trust put into trade unions, reduce the level of
commitment and result in the laborers distancing themselves from unionized organizations.
In order to overcome these problems, trade unions should reorganize the Union-member
relationship by taking into account the sociological data and develop more challenging policies on the
370 M. S. Ascı / IJTEBS, 2 (2): 367-371, 2018/Proceeding of ICTEBS
changing working conditions.
It would be an accomplishment for our country if this tendency would result in a healthy
organization that surpasses criticism such as “Unionism in Turkey has never developed freely or in
accordance to structural requirements, it has always been manipulated (Tuncay, 1979).
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