Mine workers, the state and war: The Ereğli-Zonguldak coal basın as the site of contest, 1920-1947

Abstract

This study investigates the complex relations between the people of the Eregli- Zonguldak basin, who supplied the underground workforce of the coalmines, the mining companies and the state in the early Republican era, and the tough relations between the basin's people and the state brought by the compulsory paid labor regime during the Second World War period. The study aims to reveal the conditions of the mineworkers following flexible work pattern between mining and subsistence-agriculture, their identities, patterns of solidarity and of struggle. During the period, the labor relations in the basin were shaped by the low-wage policy and labor-intensive production choices of the companies, fluctuations in demand for coal, the state's nationalization policy of the capital and protectionist-etatist industrialization projects, the repressive labor policies of the single-party era, the means of extra-economic coercion and the workers' struggles. The identity of the workers, their relations to the other actors, their patterns of solidarity and of struggle came into being on a junction formed by the articulation of the mining to the village community. During the 1940s, the forced labor regime made the relations between the state and the people of the basin tense. Instead of submitting, the basin's people developed a wide resistance repertoire. In the post-war era, the state guaranteed labor supply through reconstituting previous work pattern and offering social services to the mineworkers. Hence, the whole basin with its villages became a "company-village" under the control of the state. Contrary to the arguments which define the underground workers as belonging to primarily a peasant universe and to pre-capitalist social relations, this study defines them as a modern form of labor compatible to the capitalist production relations in the mines. The Zonguldak mineworkers with their cheap and unskilled labor constituted the lowest stratum of the regionally-segmented labor market, who at the same time shouldered the reproduction cost of labor force through subsistence-agriculture.