Precarity (Euromayday) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

For a sociological view of labor conditions, see Precarious work
Precarious work
Precarious work is a term used to describe non-standard employment which is poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and cannot support a household. In recent decades there has been a dramatic increase in precarious work due to such factors as: globalization, the shift from the manufacturing sector to...
For a social Christianity view see Precarity (Social Christianity)
Precarity (Social Christianity)
Precarity is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term has been specifically applied to either intermittent work or, more generally, a confluence of intermittent work and precarious existence.-Catholic Origins:In its English...

Precarity is a condition of existence

Existence

In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...

without predictability

Predictability

Predictability is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system's state can be made either qualitatively or quantitatively.-Predictability and Causality:...

or security

Security

Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection...

, affecting material

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

or psychological

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

welfare. The term has been specifically applied to either intermittent work or, more generally, a confluence of intermittent work and precarious existence.

Precarity in Europe

It is a term of everyday usage as Precariedad, Precariedade, Précarité, or Precarietà in a number of European countries, where it refers to the widespread condition of temporary, flexible, contingent, casual, intermittent work in postindustrial 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
Flexicurity
Flexicurity is a welfare state model with a pro-active labour market policy. The term was first coined by the social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in the 1990s....

(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 to affect all of service sector labor in a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a wider sense, but particularly youth, women, and immigrants.

While contingent labor has been a constant of capitalist societies since the industrial revolution, Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...

and Antonio Negri

Antonio Negri

Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...

have argued that the flexible labor force has now moved from the peripheral position it had under Fordism

Fordism

Fordism, named after Henry Ford, is a modern economic and social system based on industrial mass production. The concept is used in various social theories about production and related socio-economic phenomena. It has varying but related meanings in different fields, as well as for Marxist and...

to a core position in the process of capitalist accumulation under Post-Fordism

Post-Fordism

Post-Fordism is the name given to the dominant system of economic production, consumption and associated socio-economic phenomena, in most industrialized countries since the late 20th century...

, which is thought to be increasingly based on the casualized efforts of affective, creative, immaterial labor. 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

Labor market segmentation

A labor market is seen as segmented if it "consists of various sub-groups with little or no crossover capability". Segmentation can result in different groups, for example men and women, receiving different wages for the same work...

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 creative class

Creative class

The Creative Class is a socioeconomic class that economist and social scientist Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, identifies as a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial...

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 Global Justice Movement

Around year 2000, the word started being used in its English usage by some global justice movement

Global Justice Movement

The Global Justice Movement is a network or constellation of globalized social movements opposing what is often known as the “corporate globalization” and promoting equal distribution of economic resources.-Movement of movements:...

(sometimes labelled antiglobalization movement) activists (Marches Européennes contre le chômage la précarité et les exclusions - European Marches against unemployment, precarity and social exclusion), and also in EU official reports on social welfare. But it was in the strikes of young part-timers at McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

and Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....

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!, CGT

Confédération générale du travail

The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...

, SUD, CNT

Confédération nationale du travail

- History :The CNT-F or National Confederation of Labour is a French anarcho-syndicalist union.It was founded in 1946 by Spanish anarcho-syndicalists in exile, and former members of Confédération Générale du Travail-Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire , its name is derived from the Spanish CNT, the...

, Trotskyites and other elements of the French radical left.

In 2001 the Italian collectives and networks identifying with the global justice movement, as they were preparing for the Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

counter-summit just months away,
inaugurated in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

a new kind of first of may, MAYDAY, spelling it like the international call for rescue

Mayday (distress signal)

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me"....

, and explicitly centering it on the street representation of the so-called "precarious generation." It employed carnival

Carnival

Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...

-like techniques of agitation (allegorical wagons, media subvertising, colorful actions etc.) in imitation of gay pride

Gay pride

LGBT pride or gay pride is the concept that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity...

s and love parades of the 1990s. Italian activists meant it as a revival of the wobbly traditions of May Day

May Day

May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

, 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 global justice activists participated as non-neutral observers. In 2004, activists in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

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 icon

Icon

An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...

of San Precario, patron saint

Patron saint

A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...

of the struggle against precarity. The religious imagery proved very popular in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

and elsewhere, and would colonize the mainstream mediascape in the following years. By virtue of all these developments, Mayday 2004 drew 80,000 young protesters from all over Italy. This attracted attention from other parts of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

San Precario

February 29 is the day of San Precario, the patron saint of precarious workers. He was created by the Chainworkers at the Milan

Milan

ese space Reload

Reload

Reload may refer to:* Repeated handloading of firearm cartridges, adding powder and primer to an empty metallic shell casing to create ammunition* Reloading scam...

where the 2004 EuroMayDay

EuroMayDay

EuroMayDay is a political day of action against precarity promoted by a network of feminist, anti-capitalist and migrant groups and collectives in mostly Western Europe. It takes place on the 1st of May each year, May Day, traditionally a celebration of solidarity among workers across the world...

was organised with others including the Critical Mass

Critical Mass

Critical Mass is a cycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world. The ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco. The purpose of Critical Mass is not usually formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and...

group. The Milan Critical Mass already had its own patron saint, Santa Graziella (Graziella is the name of a bicycle firm).

San Precario was originally conceived as a male saint (Romano, 2004). ChainWorkers 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 public appearance was at a Sunday supermarket opening on Feb 29, 2004):

A statue was carried in the streets, preceded by assorted clergy including a cardinal reciting prayers over a loudspeaker, and followed by pious people.

The groups claim that the name functions like a multiple user name or myth such as Luther Blissett

Luther Blissett (nom de plume)

Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994...

and quote the Wu Ming

Wu Ming

Wu Ming is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.In their pre-Wu Ming days, the group wrote the novel Q ....

collective in giving theoretical coherence, although it is mostly seen as a Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

detournement

Detournement

A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...

of the concept.

See Precarity (Social Christianity)
Precarity (Social Christianity)
Precarity is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term has been specifically applied to either intermittent work or, more generally, a confluence of intermittent work and precarious existence.-Catholic Origins:In its English...

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 European Social Forum

European Social Forum

The European Social Forum is a recurring conference held by members of the alter-globalization movement . In the first few years after it started in 2002 the conference was held every year, but later it became biannual due to difficulties with finding host countries...

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 Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

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 Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

on Good Friday

Good Friday

Good Friday , is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of...

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 EuroMayDay

EuroMayDay

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 Barroso Commission

Barroso Commission

The Barroso Commission is the European Commission that has been in office since 22 November 2004 and is due to serve until 2014. Its president is José Manuel Barroso, who presides over 26 other commissioners...

, as well as a European minimum wage and basic income. Cyber and queer rights are also part of the mayday deliberations and activities.

Rebelling against Precarity in France and Denmark

A core constituency of mayday has been the movement of Intermittents, 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 unemployment benefits (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 1968. 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 Villepin 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 Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

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.

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