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(en) en) Ireland, Anarchist journal Red and Black Revolution #11 - Focuse on precarity in Ireland
Date
Sun, 14 Jan 2007 09:19:48 +0200
Over the past year there has been an emerging preoccupation among
anarchists and socialists with precarity as it’s an expression of a new
work discipline imposed by neo-liberalism. Already there have been
several precarity forums in European cities aimed at etching out a sense
of the identities formed through the shared experience of the demands of
job market flexibility. --- There have also been five successive years
of Euromayday parades across Europe calling for “flexicurity.” None of
this escaped the notice of Irish activists. In Ireland, the WSM has so
far been involved in two campaigns that can be linked to the issue. Our
members were involved in providing solidarity to a group of Polish temp
workers in an attempt to highlight the exploitative use of agency staff
by Tesco, and also in giving out information on workplace and union
rights in the Get Up, Stand Up Campaign.
The Get Up, Stand Up initiative emerged from discussions between members
of the Workers Solidarity Movement, Irish Socialist Network, Independent
Workers Union and other individuals in order to spread information on
unions and workplace rights to the largely unorganised sectors of the
main retail streets and malls in Dublin city centre.
Starting off on Mayday 2005, the campaign distributed over 5,000
multilingual leaflets containing information on basic employment rights
and union contact details, directly to workers in high street shops and
shopping centres. The campaign also played another role, by attempting
to revitalise the idea that workers and bosses have nothing in common.
We argued that this manifests itself most clearly in the need for
distinctly worker based organisations like unions.
The campaign also offered an alternative to the spectacular and short
term strategies that characterised much of the recent anti-capitalist
era. It was at this level that the precarity discussions were most
influential, allowing ourselves to revaluate the class relationship as
well as increasing our political work that is more closely related to
our own everyday experiences. Speaking of ourselves as part of a class,
instead of as an activist community and develop coping mechanisms which
can strengthen and broaden the appeal of our politics as a result of
this recognition.
Already there is a wealth of statutory bodies who give out information
on workplace rights; equally the unions should be taking a much more
proactive approach to this work. In a sense the campaign just ended up
substituting itself for these bodies, with no real sense of going beyond
and developing a coherent and valid criticism of them. Eventually
dialogue within the campaign revolved around questions of what shopping
centre should be leafleted next. The ability to learn from the activity
we were engaged in was sidelined for the safety of a campaign of
information dispersion, with the campaign's aesthetics speaking of one
thing but the form of the campaign remaining very much short sighted.
Later in the summer and independently of Get Up, Stand Up contact was
made with a group of young Polish workers, who were facing into protests
with management of a Tesco distribution centre in Greenhills. Coming
from a background in militant politics, these workers took the
initiative to use their own experiences as temps used to undermine the
security of the workforce as a propaganda vehicle to highlight an
increasingly common work experience. Tesco never breached a piece of
employment legislation; 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.
For a time these two experiences were a healthy breakaway from the sort
of activity that is dependent upon mobilizing for the next big event, as
well as a start to formulating strategies of how we move towards
workplace-geared activity. Equally, here were opportunities to explore a
political language of struggle based on how identities are emerging in
workplaces rather than having to rely on the baggage of an awkwardly
represented archaic class struggle; a rhetoric that in the long run only
isolates us from those who class struggle anarchists need to enter into
dialogue with.
The application of organizing skills which have developed out of the
anti-globalisation period, the use of subvertisements, the aesthetic
separation from the corporate branding of mainstream unions, the success
of internet based organisation in mobilising for the Tesco pickets can
only be a positive addition to an organizational vocabulary that can
speak to workers apathetic and distrustful of a politics and unions
which to a large extent simply do not challenge the reality facing
increasing numbers of people.
During the Irish ferries dispute, Irish unionism had a moment of brief
respite. Contrary to the fears of many, huge numbers of workers left
their employment and protested in solidarity with the workers of Irish
Ferries. Listening to popular chat shows and reading bulletin boards
left an impression that there was a considerable popular desire to
mobilise in employment sectors where there are weak unions or bullying
bosses. There's a lesson here that significant organisational drives are
needed.
Had Get Up, Stand Up retained a more self-critical awareness of the work
it was entering into, it might have been a forum where issues of
workplace solidarity could have been raised and teased out separate to
the capital political parties seek to gain from them. With the breakdown
in democracy in many unions, and the recent Collen and Delaney cases
there's no doubt that there is a need for the permanence of such a
network within the movement.
Get Up, Stand Up style initiatives and ventures such as the Polish Temp
Workers Defence Committee have a role to play in briefly sketching and
experimenting in how this can be done both from within and outside the
unions. For the moment though, many of those involved in these campaigns
have become active in the IWU, setting up a Polish Workers Section and
joining its recruitment drives.
======================================
*This article is from Red and Black Revolution 11
<http://www.wsm.ie/story/1321>, published October 2006
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