WORKERS' ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURS TOWARDS THE TRADE UNIONS: THE CASE OF KOCAELI

Since the early 1970's, while unions have been loosing its base, discussions on member-union relationships and members' attitudes and behaviours towards the unions are getting more importance. As it is agreed, the results of researches on this topic can not be definite, since many factors of each country are really diagnostic. In this sense, one of the important characteristics of Turkish trade unionism is public sector based unionism. Together with this difficulty, privatization policy at public sector diminishes the membership base of the unions during the last two decades. Therefore the future of unionism depends on keeping relationships with members alive and organizing employees at private sector primarily. In this context, the evaluation of members' attitudes towards the unions, the motives that lead up to membership and the analyzes of member-union relationships are getting importance in order to revitalise unionism. In this sense, the paper will basically depend on the research that comprises both unionized and non-unionized workers' attitudes towards the unions at metal, food, textile and petrochemical-rubber private sectors in Kocaeli province. One of the major purpose of this research is to figure out the motives and the reasons of being a member to the unions. The other purposes of this research are to discuss the collective understanding of workers, the perception of workers on necessity of being a member, the understanding of workers on union policies and the member-trade union relationships. Also this reserch will give us a chance to make a comparison with the results of another research that was done in 2004 at the same scope. So the paper might have chance to observe the changes in three years time.