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Paper short abstract

This presentation examines workers’ health and safety as a site of class struggle through HESA Labour Watch–Turkey, showing how worker-led OHS organizing challenges state- and employer-centered frameworks through documentation and collective action.

Paper long abstract

This presentation approaches occupational health and safety (OHS) as a contested field of class struggle through the experience of HESA Labour Watch–Turkey, a worker-led and autonomous labor initiative. Rather than treating OHS as a technical or regulatory issue, the paper examines how workers’ health and safety become political terrain shaped by power relations between labor, capital, and the state.

Founded in 2011 by workers and their families, HESA Labour Watch emerged in response to the structural failure of state- and employer-centered OHS frameworks in Turkey. Operating independently from official institutions, the movement has developed alternative practices based on workers’ knowledge, collective monitoring, and public accountability. Through the documentation of workplace deaths, public statements, collective actions, and engagement with broader labor struggles, HESA Labour Watch challenges dominant approaches that depoliticize occupational accidents and safety violations.

Drawing on a political-economic perspective, the presentation analyzes how worker-led OHS organizing confronts neoliberal labor regimes and authoritarian governance. It argues that HESA Labour Watch represents not only a response to unsafe working conditions, but also a broader critique of production relations that systematically endanger workers’ lives. In this sense, OHS emerges as a site where class conflict is articulated through struggles over visibility, responsibility, and the right to life.

Methodologically, the study relies on archival materials, press records, and organizational documents. By situating HESA Labour Watch within wider labor struggles, the presentation highlights the political significance of grassroots OHS activism and contributes to discussions on worker autonomy and alternative forms of labor organizing in Turkey.