Turkish Health and Social Care Workers Union
Since their emergence in the early 1800s, created by workers to end competition among themselves, trade unions have repeatedly passed from the hands of workers into the hands of forces hostile to them. In their beginnings, and as long as they remained a tool in the hands of the workers, they served as a school that moved the class forward. Throughout their history, workers used them repeatedly to unite their forces, take action, win rights, and achieve their political goals. However, from the very moment the working class entered the stage of history through its actions, it also educated the bourgeoisie alongside itself. By bringing workers together, unions also created an instrument convenient for the bourgeoisie. The bosses, seizing control of the unions through collaborationist, yellow union leaders, threw their doors wide open, welcoming the unions in and using unionists as mediators to soften the conflict between themselves and the workers and to make workers acquiesce to the imposed conditions. Thus, the working class’s own tool of struggle has been—and continues to be—used against the working class itself.
When petty-bourgeois mindsets seized union leaderships, they underestimated the working class and consequently managed the class and the unions according to their own narrow interests. They viewed and treated workers as mere objects or apparatuses. They used unions as a stepping stone to become bourgeois, driven by dreams of upward social mobility. In this way, all over the world, the working class has repeatedly created its own enemy by fighting and paying heavy prices.
Engels, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, described the emergence of trade unions as organizations formed to protect the individual worker against the tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie. He then argued that if workers stopped merely at abolishing competition among themselves, the law determining wages would eventually force them back; they therefore had to go further and seek to abolish competition itself. In this sense, unless the reflex that gives rise to unions is transformed into conscious class struggle and carried through to the end, unions may cease to serve workers and can even turn back against them.
Today, as those of us struggling for the liberation of the working class, we accept that trade unions are indispensable tools for this liberation. The question we must resolve, alongside all our fellow workers around the world engaged in the same struggle, stands before us just as it did two hundred years ago: What kind of work must we carry out within trade unions so that the class does not repeatedly recreate its own enemies through this tool?
In our country, the trade unions law equips union executives with the broadest powers, including the appointment of workplace representatives. Under current laws, supervisory boards, disciplinary boards, and even general assemblies can easily be manipulated by those in control of the leadership to their own advantage. In this way, those in the leadership of unions and even confederations remain unchanged for a lifetime. Furthermore, according to union laws, decisions on industrial action, strike decisions, union revenues, expenditures, and everything else are far removed from workers’ oversight, controlled instead by the presidents and the executive board. All these processes, which seemingly ease the bureaucratic operations of the unions, consciously bureaucratize our unions against the workers. They turn union leaders into easy prey for capital, ready to be swallowed whole along with all their union powers.
As workers who have broken away from calcified, bourgeois unions that have crossed over to the opposing camp of the workers, and who have set out to build our own tools, we know through the costly lessons of our past experiences how our unions were stolen from us. First, we insisted on struggling within those unions for many years. We were targeted, liquidated, and even fired from our jobs through the collaboration of so-called “acceptable” unions and bosses, driven by their mutual interests. When we set out to establish our own unions with fellow workers in similar situations, we discussed in many forums how to avoid falling into the same trap again. We continue to learn from history and from our fellow workers.
As those serving in the leadership of independent and militant unions, we base our actions not on the trade unions law, but on the universal laws of the working class. For the independent struggle of the class, we believe it is crucial first to recognize any legal restrictions imposed upon it, regardless of their source, and to struggle against them.
We know that unions are the workers’ school, and that taking “direct” responsibility in oversight, decision-making, action, and election processes is the only way for them to learn to govern. In this context, starting from workplaces, we prioritize local and national union representative boards over union executives, thereby taking a stance that is independent of—and indeed contrary to—bourgeois laws. Union leaderships are merely technical executives maintaining institutional operations. Union officials are the workers’ workers. All decisions are made in the representative bodies. Leaders and representatives are elected and can be recalled at any time by those who elected them. Everything, absolutely everything, is done in plain sight of the workers, through discussion and collective decision. Decisions made behind closed doors without reflecting the workers’ will, even if they are Collective Bargaining Agreements signed face-to-face with bosses in the middle of the night as happens in our country, are null and void. In democratic centralism, the democratic aspect must always prevail in favor of the workers.
The independent action of the working class can only be achieved through the independent education of the class. For the class to act as a class for itself, training at many levels, formats, and stages is required. Strike and education funds are the union expenditures that must remain untouchable. One of the things that makes acceptable unions “acceptable” to the capitalist class is that they do not provide workers with education on the class struggle.
Militant unions also fight for unions to be used freely by workers. They do not prevent workers from working in organizations, committees, and working groups independent of the union, nor do they try to confine them within union borders. Committees, which serve as the safeguard for the class to claim its own tools and future, also possess the power to prevent unions from deviating into reformism or anarcho-syndicalism.
Unions cannot remain confined solely to their own sectors. The goal of unions is to struggle for the protection, development, and liberation of labor. The working class is the fundamental, vanguard, and transformative power of society. Every single worker in the unions must be a part of the struggle for the unification of all the workers of the world. Ways must be found for militant unions to form a unity of struggle in a common center. Unions must take a stand in favor of the working people in the face of social problems and represent the political worldview of the working class in every arena. They must work for the international unity of the working class and take responsibility in the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggle.
Greetings to Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, and all peoples under imperialist assault!
Long Live the Workers’ League of Struggle!
Long Live the International Unity of Workers!
