Militant minority at work: a successful case of unionisation of garment workers in Istanbul

Abstract

This article explores a successful unionisation struggle among garment workers in Istanbul. In the last four decades, Turkey has become a global showcase of authoritarian anti-labour neoliberalism and one of the world’s top garment and textile exporters. The latter has come at the cost of worker exploitation and precarity. Such conditions led a group of knitting workers to unionise at the beginning of the 2010s. After five years of struggle, they signed a collective bargaining agreement covering nearly 400 workers. This very rare success rested on two key factors: the efforts of a militant minority and transnational labour solidarity.