Labour relations in Cyprus : employment, trade unionism and class composition

Abstract

This thesis is a study of contemporary labour relations in Cyprus and is based on seven case studies: three from the hotel, two from the banking and two from the construction industries. The case studies involved particular medium and large size firms and focused on specific workplaces but some generalisations and projections are also made concerning broader tendencies in the corresponding sectors. Labour relations are approached holistically, examining both the context and the content of labour power utilisation as well as its broader impact and significance on society as a whole. The thesis focuses on employment practices and work organisation but also includes within its analytic frame, the institutional and political factors involved, management and trade unionism. The workplace is approached as a site of power relations whereby social identities and divisions occur and authority is both established and contested. Thus labour and trade union organisation is examined at the workplace level and analysed from the workers' perspective, taking into account the experience of hierarchies and resistance, and the experience of cooperation and conflict. The study is located in a nationally specific context, situating the contemporary state of labour relations in Cyprus in the historical course of development and local particular conditions of the island. The colonial legacy, the ethnic conflict and the division of the country and the rapidity of modernisation have impacted substantially on both the industrial relations and the class structure of the society. On the other hand, international forces, trends and phenomena in the era of globalisation such as flexibility in and the deregulation of the labour market, increased capital and labour flows, neo-liberal discourses and trade union decline constitute the broader coordinates of the labour process. These facts and schemata are both examined in the light of empirical data from Cyprus and used to explore and explain issues of contemporary labour organisation and class composition. Theoretically and politically the thesis is situated within a general Marxian framework that is informed both by the conflict school of industrial relations and the tradition of class composition studies. Workers' resistance and class conflict, the means through which class is being composed, is seen not only as a political by-product of the labour process but ontologically at its centre and conceptually at its heart. Thus the thesis also includes references to and can be used in broader discussions in and of the Left and concludes with a characterisation of the challenges and the prospects of the labour and trade union movement in Cyprus.

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