°Euro-precaire, precor

April 25, 2006

EuroMayDay06 - alas, still too European for me. (See below, for a comparison with AU)


Filed under: Precarious precarity + Protest
:: trackback url | permanent link |

Bookmark and Share

6 Comments »

  1. Still, with the possible exception of the easter egg hunt, it’s better than anything anyone in the US could come up with. It’s almost eloquent, for example.

    Matt [April 25, 2006 @ 4:00 pm]

  2. I’m not even going to make a comparison to AU MayDay rallies, which are as tedious as any assembly-line work could possibly be.

    But, reading the spiel, my sense is that some of the movement on the very European-ness that was apparent, if only among certain currents, has been muffled post- the anti-CPE protests.

    s0metim3s [April 25, 2006 @ 4:20 pm]

  3. Hi Angela,
    Does the precarity stuff circulate or resonate at all in Oz? It doesn’t at all in the US as anything but a “this is something some Euro folk talk about,” and that only in small circles. I know some folk in the US in Vermont are trying to start using the term ‘Chainworker,’ which seems more germane to the US context. Not least because legal precarity is the work relation as such in the US as a rule, and a great many people have been in financial and housing precarity for so long (such that I think it’s hard to craft a meme out of it here).
    take care,
    Nate

    Nate [April 27, 2006 @ 2:25 pm]

  4. The precarity stuff only flies in a few small circles here.

    And, despite the fact that employers now have the legal right to sack anyone of any age on the intentionally vague grounds of ‘operational reasons’, I can safely say that Australian workers are among the most docile and conformist in the world. Part of the problem is that there is a peak union bureaucracy tethered to the ALP and wedded to centralised organising, even as the structure of work and contracts is everything but centralised. This comes from over a century of a complusory and centralised arbitration system, in which it was more or less illegal to establish any other kinds of worker organisation/representation. AU is - I mean, was - a penal colony after all …

    s0metim3s [April 27, 2006 @ 4:10 pm]

  5. Thanks for that. If one had infinite time it’d be fascinating to try and dig up some of the state and proto-lobbyist conversations about labor law when those regimes of law were first formulated (and then to compare that with the words of those in and out of gov’t who advocated for the establishment of the present regime of labor law in the US, who, I’m told, made their case largely on the grounds that it would establish “labor peace”). I think it’s the same in the UK, in that who is and is not a union is more closely monitored/authorized by the gov’t. In the US one has a right to concerted activity which is either equivalent to or condition of the right to unionize. Of course, these rights are almost never respected and enforcement of violations is slow-moving weak when it does happen, which is rare. The important point is that the state’s interference in workplace organizing operates differently and, maybe, is a little less here. I imagine the ultraleft critique of unions goes even further in Oz then, given that the unions are even more bound up with the state.

    Are there strong penalties for folks who act together at work outside the existing unions? I mean, is it criminal activity or just activity without legal protection?

    Nate [April 27, 2006 @ 11:07 pm]

  6. The update, under the fold: An excerpt from The Chaser’s War on Everything”, attempting rather unsuccessfully to forment riots against comparably worse employment laws in AU.

    s0metim3s [April 29, 2006 @ 7:51 pm]

Leave a comment



PLEASE RETYPE THIS NUMBER IN THE BOX PROVIDED. ANNOYING, BUT SO IS DELETING SPAM.






Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome | Theme designs available here