Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
40th International Labour Process Conference Labour Mobility and Mobilization of Workers: Labour Mobility and Mobilization of Workers, Padua, İtalya, 21 - 23 Nisan 2022, ss.59-60
This study
examines the historical experience of the Confederation of Progressive Trade
Unions of Turkey (DİSK) through the concepts of union bureaucracy and
democracy. The founders of DİSK were trade union leaders who split from the Confederation
of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) in 1967 by, criticizing it as corrupt and no
longer in the service of the Turkish working class. From its founding
declaration until its closure by the military junta in 1980, union democracy
and the working class’ right to political participation were DİSK’s determinant
watchwords. However, passing beyond the rhetoric, could a genuine workers’
democracy be established within DİSK?
Despite its
crucial role within the Turkish working class history, DİSK remains an
understudied theme within the social science literature, except for some
academic works devoted to understand the relationships between political
parties and DİSK. More specifically, they consider DİSK as a monolithic and a
static structure and they do not take into account the internal fragmentation
and stratification of this organization. They generally praise the progressive
role of DİSK in the social struggles, making a chronology of worker’s
mobilizations in which DİSK was involved during that period. In this study,
however, we aim to shed light on the internal fragmentation of DİSK and we
argue that DİSK was not exempt from the notion of trade union bureaucracy. Thus
we hope to contribute a more differentiated perspective of this organization to
the Turkish labor politics and Turkish contemporary history literature.
We define
bureaucracy as a privileged social layer which monopolizes the decision-making
power within the organization (Mandel 1992). It is rooted in the fragmentation
and stratification of the working class over time. In many unions which have
intimate relations with state power and private corporations, bureaucratic
strata and mechanisms are more explicit. However, being an oppositional union does
not guarantee the existence of union democracy. In those cases, we should focus
on how union activity happens, how the relations among members and between
officials and members are organized (Camfield 2013). Within this framework, we
investigate the powers of union officials; the rights of rank and file on the
decision-making processes; relations with the leaderships and the opposing groups;
financial management and its accountability and political decisions of the DİSK
leadership during critical political situations such as the massive workers’
mobilizations of 15-16 June 1970 or the military coup of 1980.
This research is
based on an archival research on DİSK documents and publications in TÜSTAV
(Türkiye Sosyal Tarih Araştırma Vakfı), newspaper scanning and the examination
of the secondary literature. Moreover, we have conducted three elite interviews
with DİSK’s union leaders during that period.