7 - Labor Discontent

Summary

This chapter examines the working people’s critical opinions regarding social and economic matters ranging from poor wages, bad working conditions, bad treatment by employers, arbitrary firing, sexual harassment, work accidents and lack of social and job security due to the high cost of living. It shows how the working people in urban areas thought subjectively according to their interests rather than believing in the official propaganda, which depicted the Turkish nation as a “classless, harmonious, unified people.” It also surveys the ways the working people expressed their views and the discursive strategies they used to articulate and to legitimate their own complaints and demands.