Demarcation of the core and periphery dichotomy: evidence from Turkey's shipyards for a paradoxical precarity model

• Published date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12208
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Serap Palaz,Surhan Cam

Demarcation of the core and periphery

dichotomy: evidence from Turkey’s

shipyards for a paradoxical precarity model

Surhan Cam and Serap Palaz

ABSTRACT

Combining ethnographic inquiries with questionnaires, this article rectifies the dearth

of systematic research on core employees in Turkey’s shipyards. In doing so, it revises

conventional associations of precarity with the peripheral jobs both exclusively and

predominantly. In particular, we point to the rise of a peculiar model, ‘paradoxical

precarity’, as the core jobs have become more identifiable with precarity than the rest.

Paradoxical precarity has four distinguishable contours: (i) The masses of core

employees lost their jobs to precarious workers. (ii) Even so, a substantial proportion

of employees remain at the core. (iii) This, however, came at a cost: they became more

dissatisfied than others with remuneration, job security, employee involvement and job

intensity whilst frustrated with unions and (iv) paradoxical precarity has faced political

and economic challenges but it is reproduced by a managerial short-termism under

competitive pressures to save on high skills thanks to an ever-increasing number of

graduates.

1 INTRODUCTION

As an offshore manufacturing hub, Turkey’s shipyards carry a strategic importance

for the European Union as well as a military maritime supplier for North Atlantic

Treaty Organization. Shipyards are also quintessential for Turkey as one of the

largest and fastest growing emerging market economies in the World. There is,

however, a lack of systematic research on Turkey’s shipyards.

Likewise, a shortage of empirical studies into shipyards is the case in international

literature. During the shift of shipbuilding industry to emerging market economies in

the past few decades, research in the West had focused on the socio-economic

handling of industrial decline (Roberts, 1993). In the ex-soviet countries, especially in

Poland, academic debates have mainly dealt with the macroeconomic implications of

sectorial downturn and privatisation (Valioniene and Druktenis, 2013). In emerging

economic market economies, on the other hand, there is a dearth of systematic research

into the upturn of ship-making and employment relations. This study contributes to

filling the research gap.

❒Surhan Cam, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII

Avenue, Cardiff, Wales CF10 3WT, UK and Serap Palaz, Labour Economics, Bandirma Onyedi Eylul

University, Bandirma, Turkey. Correspondence should be addressed to Cam Surhan, email:

cams@cardiff.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 49:2, 153–173

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

In particular, the present article is a pioneering one to examine the demarcation

between the core and periphery jobs in shipyards. This is important because employ-

ment relations in Turkey’s shipyards have recently gone through a restructuring

process with the deterioration of employee rights. The article is also the first study

to focus explicitly on the core employees, as opposed to a well-established literature

on the precarious status of periphery workers in various industries (Means, 2017;

Pollert, 1991). Investigating specifically the core employees will enable us to evaluate

empirically the assumptions of precarity debates on the core employees.

From a theoretical perspective, this article aims to inform conventional

core/periphery debates which by and large considered precarity to be a problem

either only for the peripheral jobs or essentially for the peripheral jobs (Millar,

2017; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). As stipulated in the following paragraphs, we will

instead argue that the evidence from Turkey proves the advent of a new phenomenon

that is what one might call for the sake of convenience ‘paradoxical precarity’because

it relates precarity to the core jobs more than others.

Although the core and periphery distinction in workplaces has long been with us

(Lash and Urry, 1987), there are significant differences in our understanding of it.

Liberal pundits, for example, see the distinction as a functional bifurcation in terms

of the division of labour. It is noted that not every job or employee would equally

contribute to the organisation due to their strategic positions. In that sense, a CEO,

for example, is classified as a core employee, whereas a window cleaner is regarded

as periphery (Palier and Thelen, 2010). They argue that such a functional division

between core and periphery jobs are essential for equitable rewarding of employees

in line with their education, skills, occupations and surplus to the companies

(Bergström and Storrrie, 2003; Means, 2017). The diversity may also inform the

variations in employees’contractual status such as temporary or part-time

employment (Heyes, 2011). In particular, it is put forward that as the commercial firms

mature, they would aim to ease their dependency on strategically critical employees

through automation and deskilling in the core jobs whilst improving the work

organisation (Streeck and Thelen, 2005).

Critiques, on the other hand, contested that a dualistic distinction between the core

and periphery is not intrinsically a functional differentiation but it may well be a man-

ifestation of political attributions, at best, to functional variations in terms of reward-

ing (Lewchuk, 2017). In that sense, it is a choice for the prevailing workplace regime

to decide whether a given “periphery job”will be a decent job or less than that

(Green, 2008). Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond the human capital or “supply

side”approaches for a fuller understanding of precarity (Means, 2017). Accordingly,

concerns over two-tier labour markets have long been expressed in the last couple of

decades claiming that they pave the way for precarity in the periphery jobs

characterised by a manifold of disadvantages including poverty, insecurity and non-

unionisation (Green et al., 2010). Political arbitrations have been further clarified in

the case of international migration in recent years as it has added another layer to

the precarity in peripheral jobs (Alberti, 2014).

Especially in more recent critical debates, it has also been stipulated that precarity

in general expands into the core jobs by degrading employees’status in such jobs.

More and more core employees have begun to be paid poorly, and they have little

job security due to a widening use of temporary and part-time contracts (Gallie

et al., 2017). They are also becoming de-unionised with a restricted legal or compen-

satory protection against—unfair—dismissals (Broughton et al., 2016). An example

154 Surhan Cam and Serap Palaz

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd