A Return to the Subject of Precarious Labour.

Living on the Breadline: A Return to the Subject of Precarious labour.

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Living on the Breadline

A Return to the Subject of Precarious labour

With the increasing influence of business interests on the state, and with the near destruction of social security, workers’ existence has become increasingly insecure as more and more workers find their job security similarly increasingly unpredictable. Precarity, alongside casualisation and contingent labour is a term aptly used to describe the changes wrought by these and the form of working class existence that has developed because of them. Rather than the job-for-life and job security associated with such, workers’ are being coldly moulded into an acceptance of labour that rests on the whims and qualms of the bosses rather than an environment that it is within the workers‘ power to effect and change. And rather than an increased level of working class action, and an increase in union activity one would expect from such times, we have something quite different- the level of union membership in the working class is continuously on the decrease. This decrease in union membership is, unfortunately, not being replaced with any new form of workplace organisation. And the two things go hand in hand- the more precarious the labour, the less organised the workers, and this only serves to play into the hands of the bosses. And rather than the protection these workers require, they are vastly overlooked and abandoned by the mass labour movement. The precarious workers are not faceless and nameless, they are the thousands nationwide and millions worldwide amongst the most vulnerable to workers rights abuses.

But precariousness now extends beyond the realm of unskilled and so called McJobs. With the economic downturn, many semi- skilled and industrial workers find their labour being casualised as demand for commodities decreases along with the confidence of the consumer. More and more workers are finding themselves out of work, or in some cases, having their hours cut so much so that to go on the minimal social welfare would be of more benefit. In these cases, the employers waive the employees right to redundancy or compensation as the worker has not technically been laid off; the company still holds the workers P45, and the promise of labour is there- however minimal it may be. The company now has the added benefit of a team of skilled, casual labourers, on a part- time wage. Fearing that taking redundancy causes them to lose them their jobs, these workers often continue to work on this basis with the promise of a return to fulltime labour if consumer confidence rises. This saturation of the market until it becomes unstable affecting said market is indicative of the modern nature of capitalism, and when labour is dependant on this mass demand for goods and services, workers are completely exposed to the fluctuations of the system.

The argument extends that precarious labour is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Work has always depended on demand, and fluctuations in the economy have always affected workers rights. The job for life is a limited demand, in that work was/is often mundane, boring and tedious. Throughout history, labour has at times been superfluous to the demands of the bosses, depending on market profitability. Though capitalism may have evolved, the workers it served to exploit remain the same- the young, the poor, and the exploitable. With the mass worker came a rhetoric of rights and expectations, which even if it did not hold true for all, provided an important challenge to the power of capitalism. Now we have a new challenge. That capitalism has grown so much so as to render unions all but impotent and disperse and alienate the workforce to prevent organisation and retaliation.

And, as the labour movement owes it’s existence to the industrial revolution, it’s decrease in power can be attributed to labour union’s continued insistence upon working with the state. As has been seen throughout history, “Who eats by the state, dies by it,” and workers control diminishes along with their impulse to self help as unions continue to “Innoculate workers with the ruinous delusion that salvation always comes from above.” (AS T&P pg. 54) Thus the growth of partnership and decrease of power of the labour unions mirrors the decrease in independent thought and action by the workers themselves. We in the WSM are opposed to the idea of partnership between state and union. We are opposed to the “natural wastage” of jobs and any productivity deals that involve job losses, along with the increasing phenomenon of the casualisation of labour, leaving workers on the breadline.

How do we fight against the insecurity of precarious labour? (This example is taken from an article on precarious labour in Red and Black # 11) In recent times, the successful Get Up, Stand Up campaign have shown there is a role to be played in organising both within and outside of the Union. In the summer of 2005 contact was made with a group of young Polish workers, who were facing into protests with management of a Tesco distribution centre in Greenhills. These workers took the initiative to use their own experiences as temps- used to undermine the security of the workforce in the first place- as a propaganda vehicle to highlight an increasingly common work experience. Tesco never breached a piece of employment legislation directly; the workers’ direct employer was an agency called Grafton Recruitment. To Tesco they were immediately disposable and the old rights we relied on in the Get Up, Stand Up Campaign were no longer relevant. Members of the WSM provided solidarity, by helping organise a protest outside a Tesco store on Baggot Street and in calling for solidarity elsewhere, which led to several demos across the UK and Poland co-ordinated by activists in the libertarian milieu and organisers in the T and G. The protests garnered a huge degree of media attention within the new Polish media in Ireland and back in Poland.

We must work harder to generate wider solidarity for workers in struggle, urging the formation of networks which bring together activist workers with the aim of discussing, formulating and implementing strategies that will help them to win these struggles. And, as the workers who need organisation most are those in precarious jobs, we must work towards building a labour movement that stands up for the rights of these workers, and one that stands independently of the influence of the state, by union careerists and bureaucrats.
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