¡MayDay!: Europrecarious and Flexworkers in Action

Precarious Workers European Meeting

Málaga, December 3-6, 2004

Life conditions in the neoliberal age are no longer conjugated in the
third person.

A galaxy of wage-earning work atypical figures has ceased to belong
exclusively to the "horror catalogues" of the labor relations´
devastation, of the social guarantees´ neoliberal breakdown. From the
exclusion statement they are passing through to the joyful passions of
affirmative resistance, to the exigency of guaranteing the conditions
in which the "new species" can combine its productive cooperation
power with new spaces for the public act and speech, with new freedom
conditions for everybody, against the concentration of the workfare
and forced flexibility universe that seems to be at the core of the
European Constitution project´s social doctrine.In a large number of European cities, the subjective figures of labor,
social and existential precariousness are making their untimely
appearance, with new presentation forms and languages, that seem to
turn upside down the stigma and psychological pain of precarious
existence, pushing them back as the defying of a "new political
animal": that´s the way, provocatively, we can listen to the French
«show intermittents» claiming for precariousness against the managers
of the "city-factory" showbusiness, together with the chercheurs, that
is, the scholarship holders and researchers who defend their
capability of reproducing the collective intelligence under guaranteed
freedom and mobility conditions.

Is it a new type of unionism? Or actually a surmounting of the former
union forms and the first steps of fighting mechanisms still with no
name?

In the past two years these new figures have appeared politically as
an inrush that has returned new features to the conflicts related to
labor and social rights: new political animals have come on the stage
of european cities´ conflicts. We found them in Milan and Barcelona
MayDay Parades (that did gather more than 150.000 people accross their
streets), but also on the periodic conflicts of French intermittents
(not only in Cannes or Avignon Festivals).

Many of us wonder about which common features have migrant workers and
this new species of precariat of moving outlines and frontiers that
irrupts as political subjectivity –the creative intersections capable
of shaking the social conflicts outlook, stamping out the groundless
pessimism that conceives the labor conflicts just as survival fights
tending to become conservative ones. It´s evident that mobility
problems (associated mainly to migrant people) get mixed up and
involved with those regarding formation and income access and the
building of cooperation networks, in order to achieve information
exchange and the weaving of care networks, to be taken in and enjoy
the capability of taking others in.

We are living in a regime of permanent global war: anyway, we cannot
reduce it to everything that followed after 9/11; it´s not only about
Afganistan and Irak wars and either about the terrible increasing
intensity of the palestine-israelí conflict or the bomb attacks in
Madrid in 11-M: we are facing a war that is also lived in the European
mobile borders (also present within them), that is assumed by the
politicians as a central issue, which means that the social or
political conflict is substituted by ethnic or identity wars; passing
from a fighting time to that of the "emergency" and the legislative
exception, of the conversion of citizenship related or conflicting
figures in victims and executioners or in present or potential
terrorists in face of the sacred union of "democratic" defenders of
the «war against terrorism» (in other words, the preventive
neutralization of the emerging conflicts, regarded as terrorism
breeding ground).

That is why we face the construction of many problems –and also their
transformation in new conflict experiments; we possess notions of how
to renovate the activist forms in order to, on one side, redesign the
map of our own lifes subjected to the obligation of accepting the
«scarce employment» to survive and, on the other side, to make this
imposed precariousness in employment, in knowledge and in general life
become the beginning of a new political and existential scenery of
desires and practical conjectures of freedom and mobility for
everyone.

From the 3rd to the 6th of December Malaga will held a meeting of all
the people throughout Europe that are working, discussing and
experimenting with the construction of research, organization and
conflict spaces between the new labor figures and the new metropolitan
life forms.

Sharing experiences and debates from each territory, presenting some
of the most interesting researchs on precariousness and preparing the
device MAYDAY 05 are some fundamental subjects we wish to deal with
those days.
Program
In the meeting we will mainly focus on three working, debate and
collective production spaces:

1> Tools for precariousness visibility and common spaces between
migrantes and European precarious: Mayday05, 2nd of April(European day
of action for the freedom of movement), common agenda,etc.

2 > Tools for experiences and analysis communication on
precariousness: We will discuss the utility and option of opening a
weblog designed to articulate and intensify the common work, inviting
the collectives that already possess a wide experience on this ground:
thistuesday.org, chainworkers,
loslunesalsol.net.

3 > Tools of "biounionism" : precariousness offices, research-action
initiatives, workers laboratories, etc.
Anyhow the definitive program is not closed yet and so we hope to
receive all your suggestions, proposals or doubts in the following
e-mail addresses:

Email: nsg@otramalaga.org

toret@wewearbuildings.cc

Organizations that have confirmed their participation:

Chainworkers

Sapienza Pirata

Precarias a la Deriva

Yo Mango!

Asamblea MayDay de Barcelona

Asamblea MayDay Sur

Indymedia estrecho / madiaq

CGT

Casa de Iniciativas 1.5

Mesa del Temporero, Andalucía

Tavolo Migranti

Intermittents

Revista Contrapoder

more information (in Spanish) at

OtraMalaga