hydrarchist writes
The aim of this collective is to contact and organise logistics and actions
with all the militant movements in France and in Europe and to make this
initiative a success on the scale of the forces that commit themselves to
it.
We call on all organisations to sign this document and all individuals who
agree with it to come and take part.

Knock Out in Cannes!

For an International Festival of Social Struggles in Cannes.
We are currently experiencing an acceleration of the wrecking of social
achievements.
It is not a time to be resigned. The government is cynically and arrogantly
continuing to implement the social plan devised by MEDEF (the confederation
of French business).

"Theme Park Slammed For 'Ihatework' Web Site"
Reuters

Some U.K. businesses are up in arms over a theme park's promotional Web
site, because they say the site encourages people to skip work, Reuters
reports on CNN's Web site. The Federation of Small Businesses, which has
more than 185,000 members, said it was unhappy with Alton Towers,
Britain's biggest theme park, which launched the Web site,
www.ihatework.co.uk. According to the group, the site — and the mid-week
discount offer it promotes — could cause some employees to blow off work.
(DLF)

Full story: here.

hydrarchist writes:

MAYDAY, MAYDAY!! Why Precari@s, Intermittents, Cognitari/e Are Rebelling Across NEUROPA...

Remember MAYDAY, the global holiday of workers, dear to anarchists and socialists worldwide, born in America and mummified in Russia and China, fallen in neglect in Europe as neoliberalism mounted and many unions sold out? Well, in Milano since 2001 a network of Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish media hacktivists, rank-and-file unions, self-run and squatted youth centers, critical mass bikers, radical networks, student groups, syndicalist collectives, immigrants' associations, assorted commies, greens, anarcos, gays and feminists have given life to a MAYDAY PARADE taking place in the afternoon of May 1st, whose participation and meaning has grown tremendously from 5,000 to 50,000 people, thereby triggering many urban actions and social conflicts that are spreading among young temps, partimers, freelance and contract workers, researchers and teachers, service and culture workers in Italy, France, Spain, and elsewhere across Europe.

Flying Squads and the Crisis of Workers' Self-Organization

Alex Levant

On September 7, 2000, over 100 people from the Somali community and union
supporters visited an immigration office in Toronto in defence of four families
facing deportation and waiting for decisions on their appeals to stay on
humanitarian and compassionate grounds.  Although they were confident that their appeals would be successful, they feared that they would be deported before a decision was made (a common practice for Immigration Canada).  At the families'request, an action was called to secure a commitment from the authorities that this would not happen.

hydrarchist writes:

Mayday 2004. MayDay, MayDay!

Flexworkers rebel against the precarization of life!

We are the precarious, the flexible, the temporary, the mobile. We’re the
people that live on a tightrope, in a precarious balance; we’re the
restructured and outsourced, those who lack a stable job, and those who
are overexploited; those who pay a mortgage or a rent that strangles us.
We’re forced to buy and sell our ability to love and care. We’re just like
you: contortionists of flexibility.

"Work, Value and Domination:

On the Continuing Relevance of the Marxian Labor Theory of Value
in the Crisis of the Keynesian Planner State"

Harry Cleaver

During the last decade or so, in the midst of a profound and lengthy international crisis of capitalist command, the Marxian labor theory of value has been subjected to severe critiques on both theoretical and historical grounds. The major theoretical critique — from Steedman and other Social Democrats — reformulated earlier attacks on the so-called metaphysical character of the theory and called for the abandonment of a value theory that was neither meaningful nor necessary. This attack, as others before it, has been been rejected, more or less convincingly depending on the character of the arguments, by Marxists of all stripes.

More serious than this rejection on abstract grounds, have been a series of arguments that the Marxian labor theory of value, while perhaps once pertinent for the understanding of the dynamics of capitalist development, has been rendered obsolete by the historical evolution of capital accumulation. In other words, new theory is needed to understand and fight new forms of domination which emerged out of the old dynamics of the class relationship itself. This paper analyses and responds to two of the more interesting formulations of this perspective: those of Claus Offe and Toni Negri.

"The New School's Labor War"

Tom Robbins, Village Voice

Union Wins Election Fair And Square, But Prez Kerrey Wants A Do-Over

New School University—founded by left-leaning intellectuals more than 80 years ago—is taking a page from anti-labor corporations in fighting an ongoing union-organizing battle.

"Notes on Another Defeat for U.S. Workers:

The Los Angeles Supermarket Strike of 2003-2004"

Loren Goldner

Media coverage was eclipsed by Hollywood’s Academy Awards, but on Sunday, Feb. 29, Southern California supermarket workers voted 86% to end their five-month old strike, accepting a contract that amounts to a serious, if not total, victory for a determined employer offensive with national implications.Thus one of the most important strikes in the U.S. in years has ended in defeat.

nolympics writes:

This essay is from Confronting Capitalism, a new collection from Softskull edited by Eddie Yuen, George Katsiafikas and Daniel Burton Rose and to be published in the coming months.

"Insurgent Chinese Workers and Peasants:
The 'Weak Link' in Capitalist Globalization and U.S. Imperialism" (1)
John Gulick

The attacks of September 11 forced the worldwide movement against capitalist globalization into temporary retreat. But as the Bush II regime parlayed the mini-horror of Cold War blowback into the mega-horror of U.S. imperial conquest in Central and West Asia, savvier elements of the movement against capitalist globalization quickly regrouped. While the Cheney-Perle-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz axis in Washington plotted the invasion and occupation of Iraq, these elements of the movement appropriately preoccupied themselves with how to theoretically link capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism, and how to recompose the movement accordingly. Given the urgency with which this reorientation had to be effected, and the tremendous stakes involved, it is no mystery why relatively obscure events unfolding in the "rust bowl" of northeast China in the spring of 2002 were missed by most opponents of capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism. Yet these events that took place in the cities of Daqing and Liaoyang crystallized a much vaster pattern of events that may seriously wound both capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism.

jinx writes

"THE COLLAPSE OF WAGED EMPLOYMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA"

When: Thursday, Feb 19 from 12:30-2pm

Where: Room 1134, International Affairs Building

It will take place at the Institute of African Studies (Room 1134) International Affairs Bldg, Columbia University. Amsterdam Ave @ 117th Street, 11th floor

The speaker:

Franco Barchiesi (b.1968 Senigallia, Italy) is
currently Assistant Professor in African Studies at the Dept. of Politics, University of Bologna.
From 1996 to 2002 he has been a lecturer in the Dpt of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he is a PhD candidate and completing a dissertation on "Social Citizenship and Changes in Forms of Employment in the Making of Post-apartheid South Africa". He has published, among other, in "Review of African Political Economy",
"Critical Sociology", "Rethinking Marxism", "Monthly Review", "Antipode", "Labour, Capital & Society". His latest book (co-edited with Tom Bramble) is "Rethiking the Labour Movement in the 'New' South Africa"
(London, Ashgate, 2003).