Editorial

Why bother with industrial structures? Most of the current debates on the changing “precarious” work conditions, organizing, networking, terms like “precarity” etc. not only stay on the surface of the actual changes in exploitation, they also cannot describe the connection between the changing material structures within capitalism and the forms of struggles emerging within and against these structures. More than any books, revolutionary programms and historical accounts, the industrial structures themselves (e.g. the cooperation within a factory or office, the local transport system, the supply chains, the IT-networks, the migration flows) are the active memory of the working class and its struggles. This memory is shaped by the antagonism it contains. Each collective action or undercurrent behaviour which expresses the desire, reluctance, needs, and resistance of workers against the material relation which sucks their life time and energy, change these structures. The changes have ripple effects: a combative factory is dismantled, new people are hired, new machines are developed, parts of the production are sent off-shore, new communication lines and transport links are needed. But where ever capital goes, whatever new terrain is formed, conflict will follow and struggles will come up.
The industrial structure is at the same time organised exploitation (the violent exappropraition of human energy) and the basic framework for the struggle against exploitation. It is material base and boundary of struggles: people use their connection at work, the working tools, their knowledge, their ability to interrupt the production of capital in order to fight and are in most cases (up to now) thrown back into the isolation of their particular production unit. Unions and many lefties try to disguise this isolating defeat by talking about the glorious struggle of this and that company or profession - just to underscore the necessity for their own existance.
All efforts which try to avoid or bypass these material problems by creating external organisations (anarcho-syndicalist unions, activist networks, communist organisations) are antiquated the second they are formed, loosing touch with the current forms the class conflict takes. The industrial structure is a hierarchical profit-seeking control apparatus but at the same time it is the actual way we produce our living and it is the material for our future reproduction. A revolutionary process is a process of creative destruction within and beyond the industrial structure - and when lefty organisations try to ‘anticipate’ a free cooperation of workers that‘s just another sign of their backwardness and reactionary nature.
The relation between the concrete form of exploitation and the organisation of struggle is reflected in the concept of ‘class composition’. An inspiring text from the German mag ‘wildcat’ has lately been translated into English [wildcat-text]; and an older text might still serve to make the argument clearer [kolinko-text].
The first part of this issue deals with the shifting global network of fibreglass-cables and transport supply chains, not from ‘technological’ reasons, but because they are the materialisation of past and present proletarian unrest, the tangible script of capital’s strategies and the possible communication lines of future class struggles. For this newsletter we take a closer look at the global re-location of call centers and publish an article on the transport sector. Because of their rapid development call centers are a good example for the relation between changing composition of capital (new technologies, new work organisation, new regional focus) and proletarian behaviour and demands. Call centers themselves emerged as a new concentration of work force which proletarianised the ‘white-collar-workers’, washed away strong-holds of bank-branches and the working standards of office work. Within a few years call centers mushroomed in deprived ex-industrial areas of Europe, the USA and elsewhere. During this boom-time some of us undertook a collective workers‘ inquiry in some call centers, trying to understand how these new conditions of work are being turned into subversive conditions of struggle. For more details have a look at the ‘hotlines’-book website and/or order a hard-copy there.
Rendezvous with Call Center Workers is the chat of a former call center worker with old work-mates about how things have changed during the last years. Things didn’t change for the better. If you want to read more reports from the daily life of call center workers, there are numerous work-blogs all over the place. The article Engaged Tones summarises two bigger strikes in call centers in France and Spain in winter 2004/2005. About 50,000 workers took part in the strike in Spain, something that is quite exceptional at least in Europe. In France workers of the call center service-company Ceritex went on a quite heavy strike, confronting riot cops and the division between permanents and temp workers. In both conflicts smaller (base-)unions played major roles. In the telemarketing sector the CGT in Spain and SUD in France came to the fore, with all the dynamics and contradictions of official negotiation partners. The text Bangalore’s Calling examines the rapid globalization of call centers: from the deprived areas in the EU/USA to India, from the Indian mega-cities to smaller ones, then to the Philippines, to Pakistan, South Africa and Central America. We even see the loop: Philippine companies re-investing in the USA and call center agents from Glasgow being recruted for jobs in India. The management and its consultants are frank and open about the driving force behind these rapid re-locations: the wage pressure and the high turn-over of workers.
The article Capital Moves: Transport and Logistics describes the latest developments of the different means of capitalist transport from a global perspective, drawing the following conclusions: “The complexity and geographical spread of supply chains combined with Just In Time and low inventories makes capital vulnerable to attack. The continuing growth in world trade and the developing labour shortages in the logistics industry should put the working class in a strong position to mount such an attack, but it is still on the defensive. In my opinion the particular composition of the class that is starting to become visible within the world of logistics is a harbinger of troubles to come.”
The second part of this newsletter contains several articles on the current workers‘ struggles in various countries, the threat of redundancies and the possible struggles of workfare-workers.
Comrades from Athens sent us the short report on Greece: Bank clerks and dockers on month-long strikes. They discuss these two workers‘ struggles, the role of the unions and ask why the government starts attacking workers at several fronts at the same time. Are they compelled to do that or do they simply see the workers as weak and unable to respond?
The Letter from Australia summarises the recent protests against the labour reform there. The reform would make it easier for the companies and the state to sack people, to shift them to worse contracts, to criminalize strikes. ‘In response to these looming attacks on workers the unions organised demonstrations in dozens of cities and larger towns between June 26 and July 1 with a combined attendance of some 300 000 people’.
Two related contributions are the slightly shortened Letter on Struggles against Redundancies written by the French group Mouvement Communiste and the text on Official German Anti-Capitalism and Mass Redundancies. The first text argues that only heavy workers action are an effective means against the threat and reality of redundancies, bringing in historical examples of struggles in France since the 70s. The second text summarises the recent situation in Germany: the miserable situation of the social-democratic government, the new left populism and examples of (low-intensity) conflicts due to company closures.
After that another Update on the Car-Industry, this time featuring the strike of truck drivers in May 2005 which caused production stops at the FIAT car plant in Melfi/Italy (please loop back to the Logistics-article). The ‘revolutionary’ production-model at the DC plant in Toledo turns out to be rather reformist, re-concentrating the suppliers back at the main plant. Last but not least a short note on a strike at VW in Spain, endangering the production start of the new Polo.
The changes in the German welfare state were already a topic on the first edition of this newsletter (see ppnews #1, 3/2005, pages 14 and 19). In the article Walks to One-Euro-Jobs in Berlin the group No Service describes their inquiry into the situation of unemployed workers. After the introduction of a workfare program in January 2005 as part of the Hartz IV-welfare reform, unemployed can be forced to attend certain work schemes, getting paid just 1 or 1,50 Euros a hour on top of their benefit payment. About 180.000 thousand are already doing these jobs, the aim for the end of the year is 600.000. No Service wants to know, who the One-Euro workers are, what they are doing at work, whether there is any resistance.
There are two more articles which both touch the question of struggles and war, though from different perspectives: In the last edition we published the preface of the translators of the German edition of Beverly J. Silver‘s book “Forces of Labor” (ppnews #2, 5/2005, see here), a book on the role of workers‘ struggles for the development of historical capitalism, the different forms of workers‘ power, the dynamics of labor unrest and war. In early June Beverly J. Silver was in Germany for some book presentations. She gave an overview of her ideas but also clarified some points, especially on the special importance on the current financialization of  capital and its impact on weakening workers‘ struggles, the importance of China, ongoing and future struggles there, and the question of whether the USA, trying to prevent the loss of its hegemonic position, will continue going to war. These questions also turn up in the Interview with Beverly J. Silver.
The leaflet London Bombs and G8-Politics - Terrorist Acts of a System in Crisis was spontaneously written after the alleged suicide attacks in London and distributed during the G8-counter-summit in Edinburgh. The intro to the leaflet was written under the influence of first undigested impressions from the anti-G8 activities and raises some questions concerning the current stage of the ‘anti-capitalist’-movement.

Love and Rage!

[prol-position news #3, 8/2005]