Precarious Problem

[SpiritiualMarxist]

One issue that I've taken up with traditional marxist tactical rhetoric and the what current reality holds is the prominent instance of precarious and non-unionized work and the feeling that traditional tactics championed by old school marxists may not apply to today.

I never really got any answers when I posed this question to my local trotskyist , they typically care more labor thats already organized or traditionally organized. Basically all my peers are in precarious work be it part time, or in the service industry and those people I do know in secured jobs are in sectors that are traditionally non-unionized such as administration or information technology.

Nowadays, typically people are either weary of unions because of the lame leadership or they're afraid to use their jobs. And of the precarious workers, besides the IWW, there's no real push to even organise this type of work in part because the nature is unstable or the boss-worker relationship is untraditional.

So my basic question is do we try to unionize these sectors? is it still possible? Should we look towards alternatives such as the IWW and other alliances? Is traditional unionization even necessary anymore?

[NewLeft]

There's this article on the precarious general strike (http://www.revleft.com/vb/occupy-s-precarious-t170056/index.html?t=170056). I don't think we should focus our efforts on unionizing these workers through their trade or industry, but rather getting them organized through open assemblies with other workers. For instance, the Precarious and Service Workers Assemblies, which drew 60 people from different trades/professions and they all came to discuss the upcoming May 1st general strike. The problem is the nature of the job: precarious. And it's understandable, they need these jobs, but how do we overcome their fear? We need to give them a sense of security in striking. The article mentions Greece and the success mass strikes have had last summer.. But I think the situation here is not ripe for a mass strike. Unemployment in Greece is around 21%, whereas in the United States its at 8%. I think general strikes can have success and there have been recent strikes like in Oakland.. There's also the call for a stop to consumption, which I am not sure will have much of an impact (considering how it's only a day), but it has the right idea: stop everything. Another thing that might interest you is this video on precarious workers: The New Dangerious Class (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH1w7vQ0mmA)? They mention alot of things, including unpaid internships and they even discuss the popular Hershey's students incident. If we go back to Greece, the unemployment of students is another thing worth noting because it's at around 50%. I think we could give precarious workers a bit of security through our numbers, so we will need an alliance with whoever we can: students, unemployed, unionized workers (which brings another issue because of the restrictive laws preventing unions from supporting general strikes).. But I don't think one day is sufficient for a general strike. :unsure: Maybe we need to focus on getting the rights of precarious workers before? It's a good question.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Precarious workers are looked upon as having greater potential than the unionized so-called "industrial proletariat" in terms of immediately politicizing their economic issues like "precarious" freelancers (who are not of the working class).