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prol-position news #6 | 7/2006
The current global class conflict is characterised by increasingly sharpening contrasts between regions or periods of boom and crisis. The fact of workers being exploited in booming or declining sectors often creates deeper immediate abysses between their struggles than does any cultural, ethnic etc. boundaries. In the ocean of the market, in the ups and downs of the economic cycles, workers are forced to react in many different ways, mirroring the general contradictions of the capitalist relations surrounding them. More...
(Another) Paradise Lost – Strikes and Riots in the Export Zones in Vietnam and Bangladesh
The garment and clothing industry is a mobile industry, it has almost completely moved from North-America and Europe to Asia, where about 80 to 90 per cent of the global production is situated. Within Asia, capital moves further on, in its constant look-out for lowest wages and stable conditions of exploitation. Upturns and slumps in the international market or changes in the trade policies have immediate effect on the workers, e.g. by short-term labour-shortages or sudden redundancies. The following two recent movements in Vietnam and Bangladesh express the reaction of the workers to these rapidly changing conditions: rapid workers' movements with a fair chance of international copy-cat effects. More...
The popular conception of IT associates the sector with highly paid computer programmers, thereby turning a blind eye on the fact that the major share of the work is done in micro-electronic industries where the means of work, e.g. materials for the software developers, are manufactured. The production of semi-conductors is part of this industry. In order to produce micro-chips so-called (silicon) wafers have to undergo various processes. Philips is one of the biggest manufacturer in Europe. More...
Workers Illegally fired in Poland's Special Zone of Exploitation
I got a job in September 2005. Before I couldn’t find any job. I worked on a construction-sites, took some seasonal and temporary jobs. In the city where I live (Kostrzyn on the Oder river, western Poland) the situation on the market is tragic. There are no big factories here. We have a cosmic unemployment- around 30 per cent. But it is even worse in the south of the area - the highest unemployment in EU. More...
Zanon – A factory in the hand of the workers, Argentina
Zanon is not a backyard workshop, but a very modern factory with a highly automated production process. Hardly anyone believed that the production workers would be able to get the plant running under self-management. They showed that it is possible. Instead of begging for jobs in times of crisis or trying to make ends meet in informal niches they took over the precious machinery and organised work in such a way that as well as producing tiles there is still always time for drinking mate and having a chat. In that way they are better off than their comrades from the occupied textile factory Brukmann, who have to work much harder at their sewing machines in order to secure their income. More...
Short wildcat strikes & temp work in European car factories
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