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prol-position newsletter #3 out now

various | 06.08.2005 17:11 | Social Struggles

Prol-News from Call Centers, Transport Supply Chains and Work-Schemes, Picket-lines in Greece und Demonstrations in Australia...

Prol-Position-News #3

Editorial
Rendezvous with Call Center Workers (Germany)
Engaged Tones (Call Center, Spain/France)
Bangalore’s Calling (Call Center, India etc.)
Capital Moves: Transport and Logistics
Bank Clerks and Dockers on Strike (Greece)
Letter from Australia
Struggles against Redundancies (France)
Anti-Capitalism/Mass Redundancies (Germany)
Walks to One-Euro-Jobs in Berlin (Germany)
Update on Car Industry
Interview with Beverly J. Silver
Leaflet: London Bombs and G8-Politics

EDITORIAL:

Why bother with industrial structures? Most of the current debates on
the changing “precarious” work conditions, organizing, networking, terms
like “precarity” etc. not only stay on the surface of the actual changes
in exploitation, they also cannot describe the connection between the
changing material structures within capitalism and the forms of
struggles emerging within and against these structures. More than any
books, revolutionary programms and historical accounts, the industrial
structures themselves (e.g. the cooperation within a factory or office,
the local transport system, the supply chains, the IT-networks, the
migration flows) are the active memory of the working class and its
struggles. This memory is shaped by the antagonism it contains. Each
collective action or undercurrent behaviour which expresses the desire,
reluctance, needs, and resistance of workers against the material
relation which sucks their life time and energy, change these
structures. The changes have ripple effects: a combative factory is
dismantled, new people are hired, new machines are developed, parts of
the production are sent off-shore, new communication lines and transport
links are needed. But where ever capital goes, whatever new terrain is
formed, conflict will follow and struggles will come up.
The industrial structure is at the same time organised exploitation (the
violent exappropraition of human energy) and the basic framework for the
struggle against exploitation. It is material base and boundary of
struggles: people use their connection at work, the working tools, their
knowledge, their ability to interrupt the production of capital in order
to fight and are in most cases (up to now) thrown back into the
isolation of their particular production unit. Unions and many lefties
try to disguise this isolating defeat by talking about the glorious
struggle of this and that company or profession - just to underscore the
necessity for their own existance.
All efforts which try to avoid or bypass these material problems by
creating external organisations (anarcho-syndicalist unions, activist
networks, communist organisations) are antiquated the second they are
formed, loosing touch with the current forms the class conflict takes.
The industrial structure is a hierarchical profit-seeking control
apparatus but at the same time it is the actual way we produce our
living and it is the material for our future reproduction. A
revolutionary process is a process of creative destruction within and
beyond the industrial structure - and when lefty organisations try to
‘anticipate’ a free cooperation of workers that‘s just another sign of
their backwardness and reactionary nature.
The relation between the concrete form of exploitation and the
organisation of struggle is reflected in the concept of ‘class
composition’. An inspiring text from the German mag ‘wildcat’ has lately
been translated into English
[ http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/64_65/w64opera_en.htm]; and an
older text might still serve to make the argument clearer
[ http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/engl/e_klazu.htm].
The first part of this issue deals with the shifting global network of
fibreglass-cables and transport supply chains, not from ‘technological’
reasons, but because they are the materialisation of past and present
proletarian unrest, the tangible script of capital’s strategies and the
possible communication lines of future class struggles. For this
newsletter we take a closer look at the global re-location of call
centers and publish an article on the transport sector. Because of their
rapid development call centers are a good example for the relation
between changing composition of capital (new technologies, new work
organisation, new regional focus) and proletarian behaviour and demands.
Call centers themselves emerged as a new concentration of work force
which proletarianised the ‘white-collar-workers’, washed away
strong-holds of bank-branches and the working standards of office work.
Within a few years call centers mushroomed in deprived ex-industrial
areas of Europe, the USA and elsewhere. During this boom-time some of us undertook a collective workers‘ inquiry in some call centers, trying to
understand how these new conditions of work are being turned into
subversive conditions of struggle. For more details have a look at the
‘hotlines’-book website
[ http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm] and/or
order a hard-copy there.
Rendezvous with Call Center Workers is the chat of a former call center
worker with old work-mates about how things have changed during the last
years. Things didn’t change for the better. If you want to read more
reports from the daily life of call center workers, there are numerous
work-blogs all over the place. The article Engaged Tones summarises two
bigger strikes in call centers in France and Spain in winter 2004/2005.
About 50,000 workers took part in the strike in Spain, something that is
quite exceptional at least in Europe. In France workers of the call
center service-company Ceritex went on a quite heavy strike, confronting
riot cops and the division between permanents and temp workers. In both
conflicts smaller (base-)unions played major roles. In the telemarketing
sector the CGT in Spain and SUD in France came to the fore, with all the
dynamics and contradictions of official negotiation partners. The text
Bangalore’s Calling examines the rapid globalization of call centers:
from the deprived areas in the EU/USA to India, from the Indian
mega-cities to smaller ones, then to the Philippines, to Pakistan, South
Africa and Central America. We even see the loop: Philippine companies
re-investing in the USA and call center agents from Glasgow being
recruted for jobs in India. The management and its consultants are frank
and open about the driving force behind these rapid re-locations: the
wage pressure and the high turn-over of workers.
The article Capital Moves: Transport and Logistics describes the latest
developments of the different means of capitalist transport from a
global perspective, drawing the following conclusions: “The complexity
and geographical spread of supply chains combined with Just In Time and
low inventories makes capital vulnerable to attack. The continuing
growth in world trade and the developing labour shortages in the
logistics industry should put the working class in a strong position to
mount such an attack, but it is still on the defensive. In my opinion
the particular composition of the class that is starting to become
visible within the world of logistics is a harbinger of troubles to come.”
The second part of this newsletter contains several articles on the
current workers‘ struggles in various countries, the threat of
redundancies and the possible struggles of workfare-workers.
Comrades from Athens sent us the short report on Greece: Bank clerks and
dockers on month-long strikes. They discuss these two workers‘
struggles, the role of the unions and ask why the government starts
attacking workers at several fronts at the same time. Are they compelled
to do that or do they simply see the workers as weak and unable to respond?
The Letter from Australia summarises the recent protests against the
labour reform there. The reform would make it easier for the companies
and the state to sack people, to shift them to worse contracts, to
criminalize strikes. ‘In response to these looming attacks on workers
the unions organised demonstrations in dozens of cities and larger towns
between June 26 and July 1 with a combined attendance of some 300 000
people’.
Two related contributions are the slightly shortened Letter on Struggles
against Redundancies written by the French group Mouvement Communiste
and the text on Official German Anti-Capitalism and Mass Redundancies.
The first text argues that only heavy workers action are an effective
means against the threat and reality of redundancies, bringing in
historical examples of struggles in France since the 70s. The second
text summarises the recent situation in Germany: the miserable situation
of the social-democratic government, the new left populism and examples
of (low-intensity) conflicts due to company closures.
After that another Update on the Car-Industry, this time featuring the
strike of truck drivers in May 2005 which caused production stops at the
FIAT car plant in Melfi/Italy (please loop back to the
Logistics-article). The ‘revolutionary’ production-model at the DC plant
in Toledo turns out to be rather reformist, re-concentrating the
suppliers back at the main plant. Last but not least a short note on a
strike at VW in Spain, endangering the production start of the new Polo.
The changes in the German welfare state were already a topic on the
first edition of this newsletter (see ppnews #1, 3/2005, pages 14 and
19). In the article Walks to One-Euro-Jobs in Berlin the group No
Service describes their inquiry into the situation of unemployed
workers. After the introduction of a workfare program in January 2005 as
part of the Hartz IV-welfare reform, unemployed can be forced to attend
certain work schemes, getting paid just 1 or 1,50 Euros a hour on top of
their benefit payment. About 180.000 thousand are already doing these
jobs, the aim for the end of the year is 600.000. No Service wants to
know, who the One-Euro workers are, what they are doing at work, whether
there is any resistance.
There are two more articles which both touch the question of struggles
and war, though from different perspectives: In the last edition we
published the preface of the translators of the German edition of
Beverly J. Silver‘s book “Forces of Labor” (ppnews #2, 5/2005, page 20),
a book on the role of workers‘ struggles for the development of
historical capitalism, the different forms of workers‘ power, the
dynamics of labor unrest and war. In early June Beverly J. Silver was in
Germany for some book presentations. She gave an overview of her ideas
but also clarified some points, especially on the special importance on
the current financialization of capital and its impact on weakening
workers‘ struggles, the importance of China, ongoing and future
struggles there, and the question of whether the USA, trying to prevent
the loss of its hegemonic position, will continue going to war. These
questions also turn up in the Interview with Beverly J. Silver.
The leaflet London Bombs and G8-Politics - Terrorist Acts of a System in
Crisis was spontaneously written after the alleged suicide attacks in
London and distributed during the G8-counter-summit in Edinburgh. The
intro to the leaflet was written under the influence of first undigested
impressions from the anti-G8 activities and raises some questions
concerning the current stage of the ‘anti-capitalist’-movement.

Love and Rage!

www.prol-position.net/ppnews/ppnews3.pdf

various
- Homepage: http://www.prol-position.net

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