**4. Precariousness and the challenges of collective action**

The trends of productive restructuring, the reorganisation of labour relations and metabolism which have been taking place in our societies, as well as their cycles and fluctuations between crises and social dumping, on the one hand, and euphoric consumerism and growth on the other, can be understood as situations that are innate to the very structure of modern capitalism. The logic of accumulation and the regulation mechanisms of the economic system have, in spite of everything, demonstrated a huge inventive capacity in resorting to diverse ways of mediation that as a general rule are able to ensure their reproduction, despite the suffering that this may involve for the dispossessed classes. As Ricardo Antunes has noted, "there has been a decrease in the traditional working class. But, simultaneously, a significant *subproletarization* of work has been carried out, resulting from diverse forms of part-time, precarious, informal, subcontracted work, etc. There has taken place, therefore, a significant *heterogenization*, *complexification* and *fragmentation* of work" (Antunes, 1999:209).

Thus, not only did the potential of work not disappear but its central importance was reinforced. This is the perspective we subscribe. Besides production and development, labour relations remains a decisive space for identity construction, a field for the affirmation of qualifications, a source from which rights and citizenship spring. When workers weep at the doors of factories which have closed down it is not only because they have lost their source of income. It is because their very human dignity has been deeply wounded. In other words, labour still is a vital dimension of sociability that connects the individual to nature and society. For this reason we should assert that the withdrawal of conditions for security and stability in labour relations can only result in wearing out the "social fabric" (that is, the structuring process of the hole society) with all the risks that this involves, whether for economic activity or the lives of people.

We already know the devastating results of "wild capitalism" in the 19th Century whose process of commercial exploitation has meant the transmutation of the market economy to a market society with labour being stripped of its human character and dignity. And in 20th

<sup>5</sup> In the terms of this contract: i) the work should be democratically shared (the strengthening of *labour standards* is crucial in this respect); ii) its polymorphism should be recognised (a minimum level of inclusion is necessary for atypical forms of work); iii) and trade union movement should be reinvented (whether intervening at different scales and not only at the local/national level, or promoting any global alternative)

Labour Relations and Social Movements in the 21st Century 263

These situations, that ten years ago were considered "deviations" or included in so-called "atypical work", have rapidly evolved into *a new pattern* which, despite considerable differences in the situations that exist between them, share the characteristic of precariousness as a common denominator, and are associated with contexts of fear and complete worker dependence. This precarious proletariat or this "class" (between commas), as discussed by Giovanni Alves, is composed of individual "men and women toyed with in the social world of capital, dispossessed, subordinated and immersed in the contingencies of life and the vagaries of the market", the subject of fetishism and the unfamiliar that pushes the individual into "subordination, chance and contingency, insecurity and existential lack of control, incommunicability, corrosion of character, aimlessness and suffering" (Alves, 2009: 81- 89). It is a social condition of great fragility that has come to be structured in the shadow of the fragmentation of work in global capitalism and that has led workers, in a first phase, to a state of social disillusionment that has culminated in the drastic reduction in the levels of civic, associative and political participation, and who remain paralysed by fear, by the constraints that are exerted at work but which have an impact on all areas of social life, from the factory to

the community, from the company to the family (Estanque, 2000; Aubenas, 2010).

Looking at some of the indicators of the labour market – such as salaries, fixed-term contracts or the phenomenon of unemployment – is also revealing of the difficulties that are experienced in the professional field. As a starting point, it is important to point out that labour relations systems (working conditions, employment legislation, etc.) are not uniform, either internationally or even at the European level. Nevertheless, worrying tendencies can

For example, about income levels, the cuts in salaries are striking, particularly among the public sector workers of the more fragile economies (Greece, Ireland, Portugal are some of the most cited examples in the context of the EU). In 2011, in the case of Portugal, public sector workers had their salaries cut by up to 10% and saw their Christmas subsidy reduced by 50%. Furthermore, in the same country for 2012 and 2013, public sector subsidies for Christmas and summer – which have been the result of workers victories for over 30 years – will be cut completely. So the severe austerity measures that affect public sector workers (including both active and retired workers, with ramifications on the lives of approximately 3 million people) are a clear demonstration of the deficit of social justice in the wage relation and its extension to the private sector is a strong possibility (Reis, 2009: 11; Reis &

In the context of the economic crisis the minimum wage will therefore be of further importance. It is basic thinking to remember that this instrument of policy, apart from being an important source of social justice, may also constitute indispensable financial support that will allow many families to survive. For the workers, the risk of poverty in Portugal is 12% (correspondent to 2/3 of the risk of total poverty6), whereas in Europe it is 8% (half of the risk of total poverty), which shows that in Portugal the salaries are too low to sufficiently

6 Which is now around 18% after social transferences by the state. Before those transferences the poverty

deal with situations of poverty risk (Dornelas *et al.,* 2011: 18; Caleiras, 2011).

risk is, according to Eurostat, about 42% (PORDATA, 2011).

**5. Labour market indicators** 

Rodrigues, 2011; Costa, 2012).

be identified.

Century Europe, with the promising experience of "thirty glorious years" faded away, neoliberalism again subjugated economic activity to the power of the markets (Polanyi, 1980). All this has taken place under an ideological discourse that has led us to believe that work has become something intangible, ethereal and completely dehumanised, that can be summed up as a set of indices and statistical indicators. If it is true that in the middle of the last century the advent of the Welfare state was able to limit the excesses of wild capitalism, sixty years later we are again witnessing the collapse of this redistributive model and with it the worsening of the social condition of the working class (including sectors of the salaried middle class).

At the present time, the lowest position in the social pyramid appears to be occupied by those working in *precarious positions*, and this is the segment that, as a matter of fact, is "dragging to the bottom" the strategic role of the middle classes as the functional *buffer zones*  or *service classes* of Western democracies (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1993; Estanque, 2005). As Standing (2009: 109-114) noted, this involves a growing legion of people that move between insecure and badly paid jobs (in some countries the immigrant population is an example) who have no idea what job security is, who do not use the title professional to say what they do and who make up the vast world of the "informal economy" in which the word "rights" is put to one side: "flexi-workers" or "generation Y" (born after 1980) are but two of the labels to designate a new precarious class which uses a new language – emails, sms, Facebook, etc. – that sometimes makes of them a "cibertariat" (Huws, 2003). If citizenship were defined in terms of occupational rights, then this *precarious class* would lack citizenship. The precarious worker "does not have a material basis, or the occupational space, to develop leisure and participate politically". In this sense, the *precarious class* "does not have freedom because it lacks security" (Standing, 2009: 314).

Below the precarious workers, at the "level of junk" (to use an expression that, sadly, has been popularised by the *rating* agencies to discredit the economies that do not adhere to the "law of the markets"), there are only the unemployed and the *detached*. On the one hand, the unemployed suffer from lack of opportunities yielded by the market. On the other hand, the *detached* are also a growing category, without access to state benefits, and live in a state of chronic poverty in underground railway stations, under bridges or in city parks and who, as Standing notes (2009: 115), apart from having the term *lumpenproletariat* (Marx) applied to them, are not wanted as neighbours.

In a notable work about the changes in the world of labour, Serge Paugam (2000) proposes a typification of precariousness, making reference to: a) a *secure integration*, which corresponds to a double security, firstly, the material and symbolic recognition derived from work and, secondly, the social protection associated with a stable job and the supporting mechanisms which confer stability (typical of Fordism). However, at the turn of the century the scenario of labour was to open up into new forms of contractualization and the exercise of working activity, resulting in ways of integration that were increasingly precarious: b) *uncertain integration*, which corresponds to a state of satisfaction with work but with instability of employment (this is the case of companies in difficulties, more or less condemned to reducing full time positions or to closure); c) *labour integration*, which corresponds to dissatisfaction with work, but stability of employment (it is the case of companies that go through restructuring of the productive system but remain solid); d) *disqualifying integration*, which corresponds to dissatisfaction with labour and instability of employment (professional precariousness being the most notable form, multinational companies, where constant danger of displacement exists, or of companies that offer part-time work, for example).

Century Europe, with the promising experience of "thirty glorious years" faded away, neoliberalism again subjugated economic activity to the power of the markets (Polanyi, 1980). All this has taken place under an ideological discourse that has led us to believe that work has become something intangible, ethereal and completely dehumanised, that can be summed up as a set of indices and statistical indicators. If it is true that in the middle of the last century the advent of the Welfare state was able to limit the excesses of wild capitalism, sixty years later we are again witnessing the collapse of this redistributive model and with it the worsening of the social condition of the working class (including sectors of the salaried middle class).

At the present time, the lowest position in the social pyramid appears to be occupied by those working in *precarious positions*, and this is the segment that, as a matter of fact, is "dragging to the bottom" the strategic role of the middle classes as the functional *buffer zones*  or *service classes* of Western democracies (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1993; Estanque, 2005). As Standing (2009: 109-114) noted, this involves a growing legion of people that move between insecure and badly paid jobs (in some countries the immigrant population is an example) who have no idea what job security is, who do not use the title professional to say what they do and who make up the vast world of the "informal economy" in which the word "rights" is put to one side: "flexi-workers" or "generation Y" (born after 1980) are but two of the labels to designate a new precarious class which uses a new language – emails, sms, Facebook, etc. – that sometimes makes of them a "cibertariat" (Huws, 2003). If citizenship were defined in terms of occupational rights, then this *precarious class* would lack citizenship. The precarious worker "does not have a material basis, or the occupational space, to develop leisure and participate politically". In this sense, the *precarious class* "does

Below the precarious workers, at the "level of junk" (to use an expression that, sadly, has been popularised by the *rating* agencies to discredit the economies that do not adhere to the "law of the markets"), there are only the unemployed and the *detached*. On the one hand, the unemployed suffer from lack of opportunities yielded by the market. On the other hand, the *detached* are also a growing category, without access to state benefits, and live in a state of chronic poverty in underground railway stations, under bridges or in city parks and who, as Standing notes (2009: 115), apart from having the term *lumpenproletariat* (Marx) applied to

In a notable work about the changes in the world of labour, Serge Paugam (2000) proposes a typification of precariousness, making reference to: a) a *secure integration*, which corresponds to a double security, firstly, the material and symbolic recognition derived from work and, secondly, the social protection associated with a stable job and the supporting mechanisms which confer stability (typical of Fordism). However, at the turn of the century the scenario of labour was to open up into new forms of contractualization and the exercise of working activity, resulting in ways of integration that were increasingly precarious: b) *uncertain integration*, which corresponds to a state of satisfaction with work but with instability of employment (this is the case of companies in difficulties, more or less condemned to reducing full time positions or to closure); c) *labour integration*, which corresponds to dissatisfaction with work, but stability of employment (it is the case of companies that go through restructuring of the productive system but remain solid); d) *disqualifying integration*, which corresponds to dissatisfaction with labour and instability of employment (professional precariousness being the most notable form, multinational companies, where constant danger of displacement

not have freedom because it lacks security" (Standing, 2009: 314).

exists, or of companies that offer part-time work, for example).

them, are not wanted as neighbours.

These situations, that ten years ago were considered "deviations" or included in so-called "atypical work", have rapidly evolved into *a new pattern* which, despite considerable differences in the situations that exist between them, share the characteristic of precariousness as a common denominator, and are associated with contexts of fear and complete worker dependence. This precarious proletariat or this "class" (between commas), as discussed by Giovanni Alves, is composed of individual "men and women toyed with in the social world of capital, dispossessed, subordinated and immersed in the contingencies of life and the vagaries of the market", the subject of fetishism and the unfamiliar that pushes the individual into "subordination, chance and contingency, insecurity and existential lack of control, incommunicability, corrosion of character, aimlessness and suffering" (Alves, 2009: 81- 89). It is a social condition of great fragility that has come to be structured in the shadow of the fragmentation of work in global capitalism and that has led workers, in a first phase, to a state of social disillusionment that has culminated in the drastic reduction in the levels of civic, associative and political participation, and who remain paralysed by fear, by the constraints that are exerted at work but which have an impact on all areas of social life, from the factory to the community, from the company to the family (Estanque, 2000; Aubenas, 2010).
