Draft of the talk I gave at the Anomalist roundtable connected to the OSU conference, a revision of this. I may have a more recent version somewhere, if so I’ll post it when I find it.
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February 20, 2007
Why is there no precarity discourse in the United States?
December 12, 2006
Precaritization in 1905, and continuity with feudalism
I’ve been reading the record of the IWW founding. Found this, in a pamphlet presented to the convention:
"A minority of the members of society own and control the means of production and distribution, and, as a result, are able to dictate the terms of life to the many. The workers having aspirations above a life in which the conditions are hard and precarious, and in which the life of the toiler is sacrificed without stint that the cupidity of the capitalist may be satisfied, look for something better, and inquire as to the right of him who produces nothing receiving the greater part of the product of the community.
In the struggles of the rising capitalist class with decadent feudalism the worker was told that the master in the shop was his friend and the baron his enemy, and, as a consequence, the toiler fought the battles of his immediate exploiter to a successful issue. This accomplished, it was found that he had but changed one master for another, and that he was more mercilessly exploited under capitalism than had been the case under the old regime."
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August 8, 2006
Great initiative
One of the comrades from Precarias a la Deriva has a project about precarity in the US. Along the way she plans to visit with people from a number of organizations - bitter ultraleftist that I am I find myself wanting to dis some of them, which isn’t particularly productive. She links to an interesting interview of the Precarias with someone in the US, and another exchange with the same person about conditions here in the US.
Perhaps it’s worth considering formulating a call to circulate, for a network of US folk to exchange thoughts and plans on precarity here, and to formulate some goals. Among those goals I’d like to see the formulation of several provisional maps: Euro-precarity/precaritization for the US observer, Euro-precariat movement(s)/organizations/struggles for the US observer, US-precarity/precaritization for the US observer, and US-precariat movement(s)/organizations/struggles for the US observer. I’d be interested in seeing how similar calls were formulated (in Europe on precarity, and anywhere, including here in the US, on other issues such as noborders) and how the networks were formed.
In any case, I suspect she’d like it if folk would go say hello.
July 28, 2006
The rise of the six month worker
The Rise of the Six Month Worker
by Chris Carlsson
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July 27, 2006
At-will employment
It is a truism in Marxism that there is a formal legal equality in capitalism which masks a material inequality. The fiction is that workers and employers meet under equal terms in the marketplace as buyer and seller: seller of labor power as a commodity and buyer of labor power as a commodity. The material inequality behind the formal legal equality is the asymmetry of circumstances and consequences between the two. Quite simply, the results are get bad faster and are over all worse for workers should the exchange not take place. This is because the workers don’t have money. They sell labor power under compulsion, because there are only limited means to meet needs without money, and there are limited means to acquire money without the sale of one’s labor power as a commodity.
(more…)Even Without a Union, Florida Wal-Mart Workers Use Collective Action to Enforce Rights
Even Without a Union, Florida Wal-Mart Workers Use Collective Action to Enforce Rights
by Nick Robinson
January 2006
Workers at Wal-Mart and other big-box retail chains—like workers in any mostly nonunion industry with low pay and tense, dreary working conditions—are generally a disgruntled lot. In central Florida, Wal-Mart workers are fighting and sometimes winning campaigns using collective action to solve both shop floor and larger industry-wide problems.
(more…)Starbucks union
The Starbucks organizing drive is something to continue to pay attention to. Starbucks workers fit under the term ‘precarity’ as it’s used in some locations, and an interview with someone from the Starbucks campaign featured in the Greenpepper issue on Precarity. Web resources for the campaign include:
The Starbucks Union website.
IWW web site’s news about the campaign.
I also want to start collecting media about this campaign.