The last 250–300 years of the world’s social history have witnessed unique changes that have completely transformed the society, introducing countless social problems. These problems were central to the founding fathers of social theory in the 19th century. They tried to understand the main reasons for those changes and possible solutions to those problems. Some theorists such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber have developed effective theoretical explanations to interpret the world in which they live.

Nonetheless, the capitalist development or capitalist mode of production has entered a new phase in the 20th century. Post-World War II developments have triggered new debates that asserted a new type of society—the post-industrial society. These debates have been going on for more than 50 years under various labels. According to these debates, we are no longer living in an industrial society, and thus, we need new concepts to redefine the conditions in which we live. One of the most influential theorists to try to understand the time is sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Although our time is quite different from that around the founding fathers of social theory, the main problems in both the times, such as unemployment, working class conditions, and social inequality, are the same. This paper focuses on Bauman’s corpus and takes a fresh look at labor relations in our time using concepts from his corpus such as liquid modernity, heavy modernity, labor relations such as “marriage” and “living together,” collateral damage, tourist-vagabond categories, work ethics, and community.

The question then is what does it mean to do this? Or what is the practical benefit of doing this? This paper suggests that examining labor relations through Bauman’s lens or concepts makes it easier to understand working life because Bauman has a unique genre that gives the feeling of reading a literary text. However, this does not mean that Bauman’s corpus is scientifically unimportant; rather, his corpus gives readers a chance to easily understand the complicated situations around them, which is a reason why this paper uses Bauman’s concepts.

If we look at these concepts, first, we need to focus on liquid modernity because that is a key concept for almost the entire corpus of Bauman, which will be presented to understand other concepts. As stated above, after the Golden Age of Capitalism, social theorists presented various labels to name society and modes of production such as post-industrial, post-Fordist, postmodern, reflexive modernity, network society, etc. Bauman preferred to use the term “liquid modernity”because the concept is functional for his general narrative. Bauman defines the concept by comparing it with solid modernity. Very briefly, the former represents the early phases of modernity and industrialization and the latter represents the changing nature of contemporary society. In other words, solid modernity means long-terms, stability, predictability, long employment relations, and engagement in employment relations, whereas liquid modernity represents the opposite, i.e., short periods, instability, job insecurity, temporary employment, and disengagement in employment relations.

Bauman compares employment relations in heavy/solid modernity and liquid modernity in that context and uses the following metaphor for the comparison: employment relation as a marriage relationship or living together. He likens employment relations in the heavy modern era to a marriage. Just like a marriage, employee–employer relations in that era were dependent on long-term relations, and engagement between the two sides was strong. On the other hand, employment relations in the liquid modern era are like living together. There is no formal bond such as a marriage certificate that officially keeps both the sides together. As a result, either side (in our case, the sides are always capital or employers) can easily leave the other side (employees). The structure has been transformed into one that is based on flexibility. This paper presents empirical figures that support this analogy

The next section in the paper discusses two concepts: collateral damage of liquid modernity and tourist-vagabond categories. The first concept implies that when capitalism works, it produces unintended injuries; however, at the same time, if it wants to be successful, these injuries are inevitable. Thus, a world with liquid modernity produces massive collateral damage and also a duality of winners and losers. This duality is also about global conditions: the winners are tourists and the losers are vagabonds. All these categories imply a world in which inequalities are deepened. There are many up-to-date reports presenting the inequality of income distribution on global and national scales. This paper also presents some of these reports.

The last section of the paper discusses the concepts of work ethics and company as a community. This section likens the modern company to a community by using Bauman’s views of work ethics and community. Bauman considers the concept of work ethics a labor control tool, and thus, management tries to align the company’s interests with the employees. In other words, it attempts to make the company a community. These concepts are useful for conducting a mesoscale analysis. Finally, in the concluding section, I explain the necessities and benefits of Bauman’s concepts for Turkey and Turkish literature on social sciences.