When Local Class Unionism Meets International Solidarity: A Case of Union Revitalisation in Turkey

Abstract

The article concerns the recent transformation and ensuing successes of a Turkish trade union of road transport workers called Tüm Taşıma İşçileri Sendikası (TÜMTİS). In the mid-2000s, TÜMTİS was mainly organised in small-sized freight companies having around 1 500 members with collective contracts. The strategic choice of a new leadership to concentrate on a large-scale, international firm with the support of Global Unions was the turning point. The ensuing United Parcel Service campaign ended with a collective agreement for nearly 2 700 new members in 2011. The union won its second large-scale organising victory at DHL in 2014. At the time of writing, a third large-scale firm is on the verge of recognition. To scrutinise this case, I use the power resources approach in a critical way. To the approach, I add an examination of the subjectivities of union leaders by drawing on the debates about different types of unionisms, importance of the ideology and motivations. I argue that the agency behind this revitalisation can be only explained by taking both its objectivities and subjectivities into account. While the class unionism embraced by TÜMTİS leaders explains the subjective side of the story, associational power from below and its meeting with international solidarity play the key role on the objective side.

Two forms of transnational organizing: Mapping the strategies of Global Union Federations

“…These struggles usually take place against company misbehavior and are, more generally, directed against weak labor standards and low payments. In the "Trade Unions and Transformation"project, several successful struggles supported by the gufs have been analyzed such as the itf supported struggle of the Turkish trade union of road transport workers (tümtis) against the delivery transnationals dhl and up (Birelma, 2018; see also Fichter et al, 2018).…”

Power Resources and Global Capitalism

“…She usefully clarifies the notion of associational power by defining it as the capacity of workers to mobilise in order to act collectively. We draw on the article by Alpkan Birelma (2018) in the Special Issue to highlight the importance of subjectivities, in particular the orientation of worker leaders, in mobilising associational power in a small transport union in Turkey.…”

“…It is rather an intermediate concept that focuses on labour relations and actions and thus the level between structural developments and agency. There are a number of studies linking the PRA to theories of capitalism or an analysis of workers' subjectivities, showing how to connect these different levels of analysis (Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout, 2008;Schmalz and Weinmann, 2016;Becker, Kutlu and Schmalz, 2017;Lehndorff et al 2017;Birelma, 2018;Munck, 2018).…”

“…In the case of the transport union Tümtis in Turkey, the socialist orientation of trade union leaders made a difference in the choice of strategies and the development of the union's power resources, as Alpkan Birelma (2018) demonstrates. While it is true that the PRA does not aim to provide a universal model of how to achieve socialism or to prescribe political goals to be achieved by labour movements, socialist goals are entirely in line with the approach.…”

Leveraging Nordic links: South African labour’s role in regulating labour standards in wine global production networks

“…Work in the Power Resources Approach (PRA) is instructive in this context for examining different forms and strategies of power of use in contesting structural constraints and exploitation in the workplace (Bieler 2018;Birelma 2018;Schmalz et al 2018;Schmalz et al 2019). Early work in this vein, notably by Wright (2000) and Silver (2003), proved key in distinguishing associational forms of power as that derived from collective organisation (e.g.…”