The whirlpool of working life: Company experiences of white-collar workers in Istanbul in the 2000s

During the 1980s in Turkey, social life was reshaped, and this resulted in profound changes in working life and work culture. Business employment in the service sector expanded and witnessed the rise of a new generation of working people, characterized as the "market generation". Higher wages brought new lifestyles and an increased visibility on the public agenda. The 1990s were marked by these changes in working life. A young person with a graduate education starting to work in a big company could be considered as "making a career". However, because of economic crises in the following years (2001, 2008), the working conditions changed with the restructuring of companies, mass layoffs, falling wages, overtime work, increased competition, and impacts on working performance. This transformation caused the white-collar workers in the service sector to publicly express their working conditions and insecurity. Since 2008, white-collar business activity has come to the fore with the issues of strikes, resistance, and organization/unionisation efforts. These transformations resulted in a change in the images produced of workers in white-collar business positions, who were considered a "privileged" segment of the workers in the 1980s and 1990s. The white-collar workers who had been previously evaluated outside the "traditional" working class in labour studies are now part of the discussion, as their organizational experiences develop and as they are "becoming like workers". The "precariat", and its insecurities, takes its place on the agenda as one of the dominant concepts of this process. The focus of this study is the white-collar workers who had/experienced their first corporate company experience in the 2000s. The field research of the study is based on qualitative in-depth interviews with those employed in large financial companies in Istanbul between 2012 and 2015. The narratives show how companies work with their organizational structure, their policies and strategies; what kind of paradoxes companies produce, as well as the chaotic environment created by companies that have dual forms, both hierarchical and flexible. White-collar workers, who are subject to this working regime of the companies, exhibit different tendencies: some white-collar workers can adapt to the corporate world and show commitment, while others cannot adapt to this world and grow tired of company life. The aim of the study is to examine the working conditions and working culture of the white-collar workforce working in the neoliberal company in the 2000s by approaching the thoughts, feelings, actions and meaning worlds of white-collar workers.