Labor Discipline in the informal economy: the semi-formal professional code of Istanbul's apparel urban factory

Abstract

All informal apparel workshops in Istanbul share a well defined labor regulation system the semi-formal professional code. It regulates working hours and overtime payments with well defined rules and norms. Through this code, many rights concerning working hours and wages, as well as various responsibilities and sanctions, are clearly defined and recognized by workers and employers of workshops. However, it is a puzzle that this code has emerged without any government regulation. In order to resolve this puzzle, this article presents three related explanations, which are drawn from a detailed ethnography. First, labor regulations imposed by multi-national corporations on formal firms diffuse into informal workshops. Second, the workshop system requires a disciplined labor force in order to face the rising marketplace and workplace bargaining power of skilled workers, as well as rising global competition. Third, the workshop system depends on a minimum level of labor standards that blocks the unlimited exploitation of labor and thus regulates competition among workshops. This article suggests that this code be seen as a component and indicator of the consolidation of workshop system into what I call the Urban Factory; an organization of production which unites, organizes and controls thousands of workshops with more than half a million informal workers as the units of a single

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