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Precair Forum Provocation, "Flexwork"Anonymous Comrade writes: "Flexwork" This is a further "provocation" for the Precair Forum scheduled for 12 February in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It was composed by the group preparing the workshop about flexibilised work, i.e. that performed under zero-hour contracts, with minimal contracts or labour statutes, or through job-agencies. It is intended to spark some debate at the forum about what role "flexworkers" could play in social movements in the Netherlands. Other provocations and texts are here. The current trade union movement is still oriented on the ‘trade’, the profession. We flexworkers, on the other hand, no longer exercise a profession, we no longer have a trade. Last autumn’s trade union actions (i.e. in the Netherlands) have relied in great measure on traditional segments of the working class: dockworkers, public transport, construction… Flexworkers weren’t visible in any of these actions as a recognizable part of the working class. Which is logical because we don’t work in any fixed sector, we work in all of them, we hop from one to another. The union movement knows these changes of the labor market and of the working class. She does not, however, draw any conclusions from it which have consequences for the structure of its organization. The current trade union movement does not, as it were, consider us as ‘workers’ in the full sense of that word.Starting from its orientation on the ‘trade’, the union fights mainly for the traditional privileges of the welfare state: fixed contracts, decent salaries, insurance, pensions. The key word is security. But the flexibilisation of work leads precisely to the opposite. Things the unions would fight for when they impact contract workers, they have to accept carelessly in the case of flexworkers, simply because their ‘ flex’ status is a legal fact. Take the following as an example: when, in 2001, economic growth slowly grinded to a halt, the first that happened was companies stopped hiring people through job agencies, then those working through job agencies were sent home… After that workers with temp contracts heard they wouldn’t be extended, and only after that forced layoffs were announced, layoffs, that is, of contract workers. Only at this point could we hear media speak of ‘mass layoffs’ and did trade union spokespeople start to use militant phrases like ‘not a man [sic] out the door’. Nobody even mentioned what masses of people had already been forced to leave through the same doors. And these weren’t mass-layoffs? |
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