Precarity (Social Christianity): Difference between revisions

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	:''For a sociological view of labor conditions, see ]


	===Definition===
	'''Precarity''' refers to labor performed in absence of either predictability or security, thus affecting social and psychological welfare. The term has been specifically applied to define the growing incidence of casualized work and precarious living conditions in Western societies.

	==Precarity in Europe==
	It is a term of everyday usage as ''Precariedad'', ''Précarité'', or ''Precarietà'' in a number of European countries, where it refers to the widespread condition of temporary, flexible, contingent, casual, intermittent work in ] societies, brought about by the neoliberal labor market reforms that have strengthened the right to manage and the bargaining power of employers since the late 1970s.

	Precarity is a general term to describe how large parts of the population are being subjected to flexible exploitation or ''flexploitation'' (low pay, high blackmailability, intermittent income, etc.), and existential precariousness (high risk of social exclusion because of low incomes, welfare cuts, high cost of living, etc.) The condition of precarity is said{{citation}} to affect all of ] in a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a wider sense, but particularly youth, women, and immigrants.

	While ] has been a constant of capitalist societies since the industrial revolution, ] and ] have argued<ref>Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, ''Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire'', New York: Penguin Press, 2004.</ref> that the flexible labor force has now moved from the peripheral position it had under ] to a core position in the process of capitalist accumulation under ], which is thought to be increasingly based on the casualized efforts of affective, creative, ]. There is scattered empirical evidence in support of this thesis, such as the growing share of non-standard employment on the overall labor force, particularly on new hires. For example, in Western Europe, between a
	quarter and a third of the labor force now works under temporary and/or part-time contracts, with peaks in UK, Holland, Spain and Italy.

	More problematic is the fact that precarity seems to conflate two categories of workers that are at opposite ends of labor market
	segmentation in postindustrial economies: pink collars working in retail and low-end services (cleaners, janitors, etc.) under
	constrictive but standardized employment norms; and young talent temping for cheap in the information economy of big cities around the world: the ] of strongly individualistic workers illustrated by managerial literature.

	It also remains to be seen whether the insider/outsider division that economists observe in European labor markets means that the young, precarious, non-voting, and non-owning outsiders have fundamentally conflicting aims with respect to older insiders, who tend to work full-time, long-term contracts, enjoy relatively high pension benefits and who command a disproportionate weight in European public opinion and political debate.

	===Precarity and the Antiglobalization Movement===

	Around year 2000, the word started being used in its English usage by some ] activists (''Marches Européennes contre le chômage la précarité et les exclusions'' - European Marches against unemployment, precarity and social exclusion), and also in ] official reports on ]. But it was in the strikes of young part-timers at ]'s and ] in the winter of 2000, that the first political union network emerged in Europe explicitly devoted to fighting precarity: Stop Précarité, with links to AC!, ], SUD, ], ]ites and other elements of the French radical left.<ref>Abdel Mabrouki, ''Génération précaire'', Le Cherche Midi, 2004.</ref>

	In 2001 Italian antiglobalization collectives and networks, as they were preparing for the ] counter-summit just months away,
	inaugurated in ] a new kind of first of may, '''MAYDAY''', spelling it like the ], and explicitly centering it on the street representation of the so-called "precarious generation." It employed ]-like techniques of agitation (allegorical wagons, media subvertising, colorful actions etc.) in imitation of ]s and love parades of the 1990s. Italian activists meant it as a revival of the ] traditions of ]{{citation}}, and consequently as a break with traditional union representation and social-democratic compromise that had allowed precarity and social insecurity to spread unchecked to reach critical levels in all of Europe, thus repeating the experience of UK and US economies with a few years' lag.

	By 2003, the event had grown exponentially in size, and Catalan antiglobalization activists participated as non-neutral observers. In
	2004, activists in ] joined the Mayday efforts, as delegations of French Intermittents participated as guests of honor in both mayday parades. The same year saw the launch of the ] of ''San Precario'', ] of the struggle against precarity. The religious imagery proved very popular in ] and elsewhere, and would colonize the mainstream mediascape in the following years{{citation}}. By virtue of all these developments, Mayday 2004 drew 80,000 young protesters from all over Italy. This attracted attention from other parts of ].

	===San Precario===

	February 29 is the day of San Precario, the patron saint of precarious workers. S/he was created by the ] at the ]ese space ] where the 2004 ] was organised with others including the ] group. The Milan Critical Mass already had its own patron saint, ] (] is the name of a bicycle firm).

	San Precario was originally convceived as a male saint (Romano, 2004). ] then did a hoax in 2005 during the Milano Fashion Week, by using a fictive stylist who was in fact an anagram for San Precario (the Saint's first pubblic appearance was at a Sunday supermarket opening on Feb 29, 2004) called ].

	The groups claim that the name functions like a multiple user name or myth such as ] and quote the ] collective in giving theoretical coherence, although it is mostly seen as a ] ] of the concept.

	<gallery>
	Image:Sprecario.jpg\|San Precario

	</gallery>

	===Precarity and EuroMayDay===

	In October 2004, libertarian and syndicalist collectives from across Europe gathered at Middlesex University at "Beyond ESF" (a critical reference to the ] that was being held in London at the same time) in order to give life to a unified European May Day of precarious and migrant workers: '''EUROMAYDAY''', which involved a dozen ]an cities in 2005, and about twenty in 2006, with Milan, Paris, Helsinki, Hamburg, and Sevilla among the most lively nodes. In
	2006, the mayday process was launched in ] on ] with a few hundred activists from Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany protesting against pro-business lobbies in Europe: "no borders, no precarity: fuck the new inequality!".

	The ] network has gathered several times across the EU to discuss in its assemblies common actions against precarity and
	mobilizations against the persecution of immigrants, and particularly the segregation of undocumented migrants in detention centers all over Europe. EuroMayDay demands the full adoption of the EU directive on temporary workers being blocked by the ], as well as a European minimum wage and basic income. Cyber and queer rights are also part of the mayday deliberations and activities.

	<gallery>
	Image:Md004.jpg\|Poster Euromayday 004
	Image:Md005.jpg\|Poster Euromayday 005
	Image:Md006.jpg\|Poster Euromayday 006
	</gallery>

	===Rebelling against Precarity in France, Denmark, and the US===

	A core constituency of mayday has been the movement of ], the French expression to refer to stage hands and showbiz personnel. In 2002-2005, the Intermittents captured the French imagination and filled the press with their inventive rebellious tactics (e.g. they famously disrupted live TV news programs and the 2004 edition of the Cannes festival) denouncing precarity in the form of cuts to their ] (they counterproposed an alternative reform of the system which was so well crafted that put French élites and union leaders in an awkward position).

	In the early months of 2006, French youth rejected the CPE, the
	first-job contract introduced by the government who made it easier to
	fire workers under age 26. Clashes with the riot police, as it reclaimed
	Sorbonne from occupying students was the signal that something major
	was happening, as the university had been the epicenter of social
	insurgence in ]. Four decades later, France was again paralyzed by huge student demonstrations and solidarity strikes called by the major French unions, as well as the more militant unions and organizations. With the vast majority of French universities occupied for more than a month, and the whole nation on strike, the ] government was forced to withdraw the provision, in a test of force with democracy in the streets that weakened the presidency itself. ''Le Monde'' commented that "précarité" was going to be a central issue in the upcoming 2007 presidential elections.

	A few months before, France had been rocked by generalized rioting of the French youth of Arab and African descent in its suburban ghettos
	(''cités''), who sought to express angst at racial and economic discrimination
	that they were experiencing from the rest of French society. Although expressions of the same national malaise and social anguish, banlieue rioters and student protesters did not really share tactics and demands. The French explosion of 2006 against precarity was followed a few months later by a lengthy general strike in ] to protest against welfare cuts especially discriminatory with respect to young people. All universities were occupied, and the right-wing government was forced to withdraw the provisions that had to do with student subsidies and other welfare benefits for young people, although it retained pension cuts for older employees.

	In a different context, ] was also a historic day of protest for U.S. immigrants, mostly of Latin-American origin, who mobilized in all major American cities to protest against a punitive anti-immigration bill being discussed in Congress. Hundreds of thousands of people from San Francisco to Chicago celebrated the first of May by taking the streets against increased repression of undocumented immigrants by the Bush administration. Grassroots and community organizing, helped and funded by the progressive wing of North-America's organized labor — which had already been behind the successful ] campaign, narrated by ] in ''Bread and Roses'', that has organized many legal and illegal immigrants in Los Angeles — were crucial for the media attention and social impact of the demonstrations.

	== See also ==
	*]
	*]
	*]
	*Defunct ] (CPE)
	*] (CNE)
	*], also known as "Bolkestein Directive".
	*] - the social class, not necessarily poor or members of a particular underclass, disposed towards precarity. The prekariat is the post-Fordist analogue of the ] (in German)

	==References==
	{{reflist}}

	==External links==

	* http://www.euromarches.org
	* http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/publications/2003/ke5103471_en.html
	* http://www.euromayday.org/
	* http://www.chainworkers.org/
	* http://www.yomango.net
	* http://www.cip-idf.org
	* http://www.greenpeppermagazine.org/process/tiki-index.php?page=Precarity+Issue
	* http://www.metamute.org/en/node/415
	* http://eipcp.net/transversal/0704
	* http://adbusters.org/blogs/Big_Ideas_Precarity.html
	* http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/neilson_rossiter.html
	* http://www.republicart.net/disc/precariat/index.htm
	* http://helsinki.euromayday.org/index2.htm
	* http://berlin.euromayday.org/
	* http://www.maydaysur.org/
	* http://www.maydayfr.org/
	* http://www.actupparis.org/
	* http://www.generation-precaire.org/
	* http://www.ac.eu.org
	* http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/04/france_the_prec.html

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Latest revision as of 14:44, 31 January 2012

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