s0metim3s writes:

"Lessons from the Pietariat"

Mute Magazine

Sometimes it's hard to tell self-congratulation from self-abasement. Not a Proper Job, a tempting directory for artists, was launched in London in October at a party advertised as follows: 'If you live a creative lifestyle, you are by definition a member of the 'Not a Proper Job' club. So come join us and celebrate not having a Proper Job. Birds of a feather should flock together!'

Marx and Makhno Meet McDonalds's:

Casualized Workers in Paris Win Several Strikes,
Honorably Lose Another with Combined
Union and Non-Union, Legal and Illegal Tactics

Loren Goldner (1), Break Their Haughty Power

Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.

While some of these methods benefit from aspects of French labor law that are more favorable to strikers than one finds in the backward U.S. of A, the overall strategy can certainly find its uses in other countries.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Flexwork"

Precair Forum Provocation

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.

"We are the only ones who can represent us."

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.