hi - an interview we just translated into english - with italian
chainworkers - on (social) precarity, innovative direct action,
bio-unionism, mayday, and so on... - next 17-19 april there is an european
meeting for the euromayday network, in milan -

just to give you a glimpse on what's going on at this side on political
imagination+creativity :)

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> From labor precarity to social precarity [1]
>
Chainworkers interviewed by María Cecilia Fernández

The workers' movement of the nineteenth century was organized around the
factory by means of the union, but, at the same time, it created „societies
of resistence,‰ spaces of social gathering and mutual support. Capitalist
production was understood not only as an economic problem but as a social
problem as well. The struggle against capitalism signified a struggle
against mercantile forms of life, beyond unionization and worker's rights.

Presently, the capitalist process of producing surplus value has
incorporated as a force of labor the cognitive, comunicative, and affective
capacities of human beings. One of the most dynamic dimensions of social
production is a type of inmaterial work force. Computer technicians, web
designers, workers in advertising, artists and publicists are part of the
present social composition of labor. In post-Fordist production, the new
forms of labor have raised the question of which forms of social
organization will confront the situation of flexibility, mobility and labor
precarity, as well as the forms of life of capitalist social relations.

In Italy, the Milan collective Chainworkers has been working with the issues
of social and labor-related precarity for a number of years. Chainworkers‚
early efforts were, on the one hand, aimed at the employees of commercial
chains and signified an attempt to address that emblem of precarity of the
1990s, the McDonald‚s style employee, who, without rights or union
representation, is unable to perceive themselves as a worker in the
classical sense. On the other hand, the collective experimented with
innovative strategies of communication with the objective not only of making
available information concerning labor rights in the situation of precarity,
but also of creating means for uniting and social struggle beyond
unionization. In order to give visibility to the new figures of precarity in
Europe, Chainworkers organized MayDay (First of May) in 2001 as a
carnivalesque festival in the streets of Milan.

María Cecilia Fernández (MCF): What analysis have you made after your first
round of activity?

Frenchi (F): In the beginning, at the core of the movement the entire
question of labor was expressed with rhetorics that denoted powerlessness
but not the ability to intervene („Stop the Precariat,‰ etc.). In our case,
one of our inicial characteristics was a hatred for chain businesses not as
places of consumption, but as institutions. But we were very innocent
because we thought that the neo-slave conditions of workers in commerical
chains would be a condition „non-imitatible‰ and that large zones of
marginality understood as a certain reproduction of the Fordist market were
being created. But we were mistaken: the entire world of labor was moving
towards this neo-slave condition. Precarity, as a concept, appeared in 2002,
as part of the realization that this was not a new subproletariat that was
being born nor just a labor mechanism that was being deployed but a new,
more complex social relation between life and work.

MCF: How do you define, then, social precarity?

F: It is a mechanism of control, a division of labor, the partitioning of
human resources, and a selection that generates profits and surplus value
for businesses, that mutates and modifies its own structure. This movement
from labor precarity to social precarity calls into question our ability to
intervene and, as well, questions attempts at revindication that count on a
strong historical tradition. For example, the Italian Autonomia movement of
the 1970s, with its refusal of work and its reappropriation of time, or the
right to a decent life preserved by a series of civil and social rights won
over the course of history.

MCF: For Chainworkers what does creating community mean?

F: To create conscious relations of solidarity with strong ties, the
capacity for communication between all the subjects in the community. The
potential to generate an autonomous production that is cooperative,
horizontal even assuming the division of competences, strongly tied to the
undeniable potential that one can see in others. A community of individuals
in solidarity, of friends, but above all a community in the moment that it
manages to produce and cooperate and to have meaning.

MCF: Which are this community‚s different planes of intervencion?

F: There are many. First off is collective self-formation. To be in a
community is to be in a situation that already supports you. Then, there is
a social element, an element of community, an element of communication, an
element of play, and, as well, an element of autoredito [ED: the generation
of income out of self-regulated jobs and other activities]. All this
includes various factors: community, socialization, education, political
intervention, closer relations with some groups...that is to say, a strong
consciousnes of the territory and the mechanisms that regulate this
territory. This is the community that we are creating.

MCF: In your experience how has this idea of the production of community
taken shape and what does the concept of „autoredito‰ signify in your
practice?

Bombo: I began my professional education in a social center, Deposito Bulk,
in Milan. There I recieved something that neither a university nor a job
could have given me. Following the do it yourself philosophy of the social
centers, I did my professional training, which I presently apply to my work.
The discourse of free software and the idea of sharing knowledge allowed me
not only to affirm a cultural demand, but also to continue working in the
information technology sector with the objective of not just producing and
earning more, but of working in a manner alternative to that of the
commercial world of information technology.

Much later, we began to think of the Centro Sociale La Pergola as a possible
place to begin constructing the necessary infrastructure for our project, as
well for creating spaces of intervention in the city˜from tools and
telematic space to an accomodation space that was extremely affordable
compared with what Milan had to offer and from here was born the
self-managed hostel. Opening a hostel involved us in a project that on a
volunteer basis wasn‚t going to work and so we solved this by creating jobs
that didn‚t follow the traditional rules as we considered them a type of
social service.

MCF: Chainworkers began in 2001 with the MayDay celebration but by
resignifying it as the day of precarity. What is the objective of this
communicative intervencion and how is it expressed?

F: Some years ago, for our government representatives, speaking of precarity
was a kin to a terroristic activity. MayDay served as a communicative act to
develop a new consciousness. With Saint Precarious, for example, we engaged
in subvertising (a technique of diverting and repropriating the language of
advertising to create meanings that are either different or completely
opposite) against a social fabric that is very catholic. Although we‚re
really secular, in Italy there is a very strong ultra-catholic tradition.
The saint was taken from this popular culture into order to insert it in a
non-religious situation. And each icon that sits under the image of Saint
Precarious stands for one of the five keys to non-precarity: we should have
access to money, housing, affection and the right to communication and
transport.

MCF: How is the figure of precarity inserted in the discouse of unionism?

F: It doesn‚t have one, since precarity is extorsion, blackmail and not
easily understood with the classic trade-syndicate forms. We believe that
speaking of the renovation of the forms of struggle also implies a
renovation of the institutions of struggle, that is, of unionism, the art of
unionization, and union-style direct actions. Currently, we are mapping out
the „sites of Saint Precarious‰ that are co-ordinated in a network we call
bio-unionism.

The conception of biounionism starts from the following premise: if
precarity is social and invades every aspect of our lives, it is obvious
that our collective action ought to start from each of the sites where our
lives take place, both inside and outside of the workplace. The sites of
Saint Precarious will be places for legal services, self-education,
community solidarity and defense. They will be everything that we can think
to create so that our actions of conflict will be incisive, striking a blow
against business and its image. They are an attempt to organize a defense, a
counterattack. In the end, individuals are precarious because they don‚t
have access to the information that they need about the conditions of their
own contracts. And, above all, they are isolated in relation to others in
their workplace. We need to break through this isolation, creating
community.

MCF: What do you think of the struggle in the area of workers' rights?

F: We are convienced that the present situation cannot be modified from
inside the political-judicial discourse. The relation of social precarity
supercedes the legal-labor relationship and represents business‚ direct
explotation, force and power over the lives of everyone. If a change in the
labor laws comes about, it will happen just the same as always: thanks to
the ability to create conflict and, above all, to create potent, strong and
intelligent conflict. Of the laws that are concretized we called them
„amorticized‰; we recognize that 200 Euros more or less a month would change
the situation. However, if this money is the reason why you don‚t build a
political strategy that goes beyond 200 Euros, then you‚ve fallen into the
monetarization of rights. An intelligent political strategy should pursue an
increase in salaries, redistribution, assitance or subsidies, but without
losing sight of the fact that the problem of precarity is when they call you
at midnight in order to tell you „look, tomorrow you‚ve gotta work‰ when
you‚ve already got plans to go to Lugano to visit your family.

[1] This version edited from the interview published in Spanish in the
newspapers Proyecto 19y20 (Buenos Aires, March 2005) and in Diagonal
(Madrid, March-April 2005). Chainworkers were key in the beginning of the
European movements against precarity, with communication tools such as their
website http://www.chainworkers.org (inaugurated in 1999), the book Laborare
nelle cattedrali del consumo (DeriveApprodi, Milan, 2001; Spanish version
published in Brumaria nº 3, 2004; and also found at
http://www.chainworkers.org/chainw/libro_cw.htm) and in the Milan
celebration of MayDay, the Precarious First of May, since 2001 and currently
spreading as EuroMayDay to cities across the European continent (see
http://www.euromayday.org). Translated by Brian Whitener.

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