hydrarchist writes"This is an extract from a new work in german and english, produced by the Kolinko collective entitled 'hotlines - Call Centre | Inquiry | Communism".
The full text of the book is available at Nadir

Fiat-Call Centre in Milano/Italy

At the beginning everything looks really nice when you enter Fiat's call
centre in Milan. Lots of space, multi-coloured cubicle walls and little
flags, lots of young people sitting in front of large monitors, wandering
around or relaxing and smoking in the corner by the vending machines. They
speak all kinds of languages: Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch,
Polish... Something between an internet cafe, a children's day care centre
and one of those newsrooms in an American TV soap.
Work begins quite relaxed, too. You get a training course where you're told
that the call centre won a prize last year. That everyone is nice to each
other because that way work is fun. That we're supposed to smile all the
time - even on the phone - because then customers get a good impression and
keep buying those Fiats, Alfa Romeos and Lancias. Some weeks and many calls
later you realise where you've ended up. The surroundings have ceased to
cast a spell on you: Welcome to the world of call centres!

Update

This story was originally marked up on October 4th. Below the article and call you can now find a report on the many actions which took place today as part of the protest. Further reports are available at the MWR site

McDonalds Workers Resistance: October 16

Hi,

I'm writing to give you more information about the day
of action on Ocotber 16th and to invite you to
participate.

McDonalds workers, across the UK, Continental Europe,
Russia, North America and Australasia, will take
direct action against our employers. There will be
different sorts of actions, reflecting the different
organisations and individuals participating- some
strikes, some sabotage, go slows, partial walk outs,
'phone in sick days', etc.

Anonymous Comrade writes "Hi comrades! we are trying to do an anthology about everyday resistance in the workplace and would like contributions. E-mail to kampa_tillsammans@hushmail.com

This is a report from one of our members - Varg I Veum

Faceless Resistance -

Everyday resistance at a Swedish bakery

For almost two years I was employed at a bakery in southern Sweden, together with about 160 others; bakers, cleaners and mechanics included. From the first day of work, I was told that the bakery was under the threat to be closed down, and, indeed, with time, we got dismissed and the bakery shut down. Of course this affected the mood and ways of struggle at the bakery, and may be worth to keep in mind while reading the text. For example, it meant that the turnover of employees was rather big, and that many of the older people went looking for new jobs.

hydrarchist writes:

"The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery?

A Critique of Rifkin and Negri"

Introduction

The last few years in the U.S. has seen a return of a discussion of work that
is reminiscent of the mid-1970s, but with a number of twists. In the earlier period, books like Where Have All
the Robots Gone? (Sheppard 1972), False Promises (Aronowitz 1972)and Work in America (Special
Task Force 1973), and phrases like "blue collar blues," "zerowork" and "the refusal of
work" revealed a crisis of the assembly line worker which expressed itself most dramatically in wildcat strikes
in U.S. auto factories in 1973 and 1974 (Linebaugh and Ramirez 1992). These strikes were aimed at negating the
correlation between wages and productivity that had been the basis of the "deal" auto capital struck
with the auto unions in the 1940s. As Linebaugh and Ramirez wrote of the Dodge Truck plant wildcat involving 6000
workers in Warren, Michigan between June 10-14, 1974:

Demands were not formulated until the third day of
the strike. They asked for "everything." One worker said, "I just don't want to work." The
separation between income and productivity, enforced by the struggle, could not have been clearer (Linebaugh and
Ramirez 1992: 160).

hydrarchist writes:"

The following text was translated by Adriana Bove for the Generation Online Reading Group.

Labour and Language

Paolo Virno

'In the period of manufacture, and during the long apogee of Fordist
labour, labour activity is mute. Who labours keeps quiet. Production is a
silent chain, where only a mechanical and exterior relation between what
precedes it and what follows it is allowed, whilst any interactive
correlation between what is simultaneous to it is expunged. Living
labour, an appendix of the system of machines, follows a natural
causality in order to use its power: what Hegel called 'cunning' of
labouring. And 'cunning' is known to be taciturn. In the postfordist
metropolis, on the other hand, the material labouring process can be
empirically described as a complex of linguistic acts, a sequence of
assertions, a symbolic interaction. This is partly due to the fact that
now labour activity is performed aside the system of machines,
with regulating, surveillance and coordinating duties; but also because
the productive process uses knowledge, information, culture and social
relations as its 'primary matter'.

saeedslama@hotmail.com writes:

From an Egyptian Website dedicated to Arabic texts in the social sciences
from the (communist) libertarian view. Egyptians writers and researchers,
participating in the libertarian radical left wing.

The Reality of the Egyptian Proletariat

By Sameh Saeed Abbood

Translation from Arabic

In the modern capitalist society, there are two concepts of the labor class.
The former expands to include all that are deprived of any control over
financial resources. Such concept also includes those who own nothing but
their mental and physical fore, which they are obliged to sell for, wages in
return.

hydrarchist writes:"

Buenos Aires, August 25, 2002

National mobilization called for next September 10 in
support of the occupied plants and factories

With the presence of more than eight hundred delegates
representing factories, trade unions and popular
assemblies, the First National Conference of Plants
and Factories Occupied and In Struggle was held,
organized by the Bloque Piquetero Nacional (National
Picketeers’ Bloc) and the Movimiento Independiente de
Jubilados y Desocupados (Independent Movement of
Pensioners and Unemployed).

hydrarchist writes:

This is a text prepared by the anarchist federation from Szczecin for the
anarcho-syndicalist conference in Essen at the end of this month.

Protests in Szczecin Shipyards and the Workers' Situation in Poland

Zaczek

Over the last few years the situation of Polish workers has gotten much
worse due to economic recession. As a result, wages have been cut and
workers are forced to work in worse and worse conditions. Workers are being
blackmailed; either they agree with the conditions dictated by the bosses or
they lose their jobs. Employers most often explain themselves by saying
that they have to adapt to free market conditions and so effiency, which
already is rather high, has to be increased. They'll also tell you that
there are many people ready to take your job.

The Economics of Global Empire

By Henry C K Liu, Asia Times

The productivity boom in the US was as much a mirage as the money that drove the apparent boom. There was no productivity boom in the US in the last two decades of the 20th century; there was an import boom. What's more, this boom was driven not by the spectacular growth of the American economy; it was driven by debt borrowed from the low-wage countries producing this wealth. Or, to put it a tad less technically, the economic boom that made possible the current US political hegemony was fueled by payments of tribute from vassal states kept perpetually at the level of subsistence poverty by their own addiction to exports. Call it the New Rome theory of US economic performance.

Full story is at Global Economy

hydrarchist writes"This is an edited version of comments
delivered by LBO editor Doug Henwood on his July 25, 2002,
radio show. The show is "Behind the News," Thursdays,
5-6 PM eastern U.S. time, on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York, or on
the web.

Bill O'Reilly, host of the O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, one
of the funniest shows on TV (and not always intentionally so),
has a feature on every show called "The Most Ridiculous Item
of the Day." O'Reilly's politics are largely appalling, but
he's entertaining, and I'm going to steal this idea and begin
presenting a Most Ridiculous Item of the Week on this show. Here's
the premiere.

According to official capitalist ideology,
CEOs and other top execs deserve their enormous salaries because
they're big risk takers and because they contribute so much to
society. It's pretty well established that executive pay actually
bears little resemblance to performance - and here's an extreme
case. Neal Travis reports in today's New York Post (uh-oh,
that's my second citation in less than a minute of a Murdoch media
property - I assure you this is entirely accidental) Bob Pittman,
who's been squeezed out of a top job at the troubled media giant
AOL Time Warner, is going to leave with a $60 million-plus severance
deal. Now this is a company whose stock is off more than 80% over
the last two years - twice as much as the overall market, and
which is now under investigation by the SEC for accounting chicanery.
If you get $60 million for being part of a collossal failure,
what would the price tag be for success?