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This is a working transcript of the telephone discussion with Alex Foti of Chainworkers Italy at Flaxman Lodge 12/06/04 and consitutes 41 mins of a 44 mins recording - please feel free to correct any errors.


telephone rings'...

Alex Foti : Hello

Jakob Jakobsen : Hello Alex

A.F. : hey…….

J.J. :…… How are you?

A.F. : Alright alright, very good very good I'm just going to have to catch my breath because Nickolai (Jakob’s colleague in Milan) has been training me and hopefully I´ve warmed up to make myself understood.

J.J. : Great. Pauline here will give a short introduction to what we've been talking about then we can carry on with some questions

A.F. : Ok, say that again cos?... you will to make a short introduction then you will pose questions?

J.J. : Yes.

A.F. : Ok. [is] Flaxman Lodge? is there with you? Ok, so hi to everybody.

All : Hi

A.F. : Ok, I´m here with you and lets hope to share issues of radical organising across Europe, so on and so forth, and I will be extremely happy to share our chainworkers? experiences? of it.

Pauline van Mourik Broekman : Alex, My name is Pauline and we're here with about 15 people so we thought it would be only fair to you to give a short description of what has been happening in the past few days so that you get a bit of an idea of the of? discussions we´ve been having.

A.F. : Sure

P. vM.B. : Although the workshop is called a Unionising Workshop there has been a little bit of a misunderstanding in us fetishising the union as a form. We just wanted to have a historical purview over moments in time and history that may be similar and that we could learn from. We haven´t necessarily proposed the union as the ultimate solution ...

A.F. : Sure, yes...I mean we’re not a formal union but we do interact daily with unions...

P. vM.B. : ...We´ve looked at anything from; women involved in the Miners Strike in the seventies eighties? and similarly Transport Workers and Cleaners and a variety of films made by artists groups who were trying to highlight the plight of ... maybe what would then have already been precarious workers...

A.F:…. I saw the programme on the mailing list.

P. vM.B. : Yeah. Exactly...

A.F. : Excellent...

P. vM.B. : What we´come up with a little bit - as a problem - is the issue of what links exactly are between us and workers who are maybe more genuinely precarious, and we´ve tried to really deal with the specifics of cultural work which especially now can be seen as much more privileged perhaps, because of the ....

A.F. : ...Well, both protagonists do not have a steady income, that’s the starting point....I mean precariousness still effects both but of course, our respective market values are different, as are our organising traditions, interactions with power. A bit of social structural analysis is in order to see what, in the neoliberal market, what kinds of job figures have emerged, what kinds of consent and conflict we have seen over the previous decades...I mean that now WallMart? has emerged as the largest company on earth, the fact that the monopolisation of knowledge has emerged as a major public issue and ???(sign of force??)

P. vM.B. :. Excellent

A.F. : So, I wait for your introduction and then we´ll start further.You tell me when I have to...
………

P. vM.B. : Well, thats then my introduction. I´m going to hand over to Jakob to ask you more specific questions. Thanks very much.

A.F. : Ciao, see you soon hopefully in London.

J.J. : But then, maybe, Alex could you introduce the Chainworkers and tell us what kind of organisation this is.

A.F.: Starting in 2000 we did a bit of (e?)merging, subvertising and yknow, you know union activism starting in public places such as malls and hypermarkets, autogrills, stuff like that. So, basically, over these four years we´ve done small and large direct actions such as picket lines, blockades, stuff which we´ve been trying to turn into highly visible conflicts to help out what we call chainworkers; people working in chain stores such as WallMart? or Tesco, the examples I was making previously. We decided to rescue Mayday Milano's sad destiny, which unfortunately (was that) the traditional unions let it die. Milano, being the city where most temps or part-time are concentrated in Italy to make, (Mayday) to turn it into the 'holiday of precarie' that´s how its called in Italy. There is at least a milion workers in the Milano area that have no certified social rights, even basic rights such as paid maternity leave and stuff like that. It started almost underground with a rank and file union called Cooper(?), we started federating first in Milano squats and inviting the French strikers from the fast food industry, there is (Abdul Mibuki names???M 6min 40sec) And other Macworkers that occupied and have done sit down strikes in Paris over 2000 and 2001 and so we did the first Mayday parade in the afternoon in Milan then over three years grew in participation from 5 to 50,000 and this year around 70 to 80,000 possibly for those overly optimistic a 100,000 workers, largely under the same rubric of precarie (?) we had knowledge workers, we had nurses, teachers, researchers, call centre operators thats is one of our main areas of activity where we had a strike together with the Vodafone workers. Its a way of, in a way connecting all the conflicts that have been emerged during that year(?) conflicts where tranport workers strike in Milan, Bologna, Venice other cities and the agitations of teachers, and university researchers. So, Chainworkers basically is a collective of union activists and media activists...go inside euromayday.org you can see what kind of European networks we have been trying to put in place this year, in fact we called it euromayday.org 4? because at the same time it was at the same time in Milan and Barcelona and the intermittants from Paris participated in both, together with other brothers and sisters they were in the both cities. We´re trying with Association Precarious (association?) and Precarious y la Deriva in Madrid with Macworkers resistance who participated in Florence(another organisation nam,?).. to establish a common network of conflict which actually could further basic social legislation across the EU from then on agitate for more advanced social rights.

J.J. : OK

A.F. : Hello, Maybe I talk too much you tell me other...I mean...I can tell you, you know, what kind of political identities have participated in this process in Italy, what kind of repercussions they’ve had with respect to the Italian labour movement, what kind of European unions have interacted with this. I mean you tell me…what kind of aspects you’d rather have me…

J.J. : That would be great. Go ahead, I think its interesting how you are linking up with these other structures around you, so that would be interesting. To hear...

A.F. : Sure, now in fact, we proposed to the unions it with which we first started, as a libertarian format to which all kinds of organized subjects, large and small could federate themselves and give their own version also yknow colourful, creative aswell as angry about precarity. Their own interpretations, their own social claims to fight it. From migrant workers, knowledge workers, CD hackers, and so on and so forth. So to have also have all the components of the Italian left which is quite diversified, to, be compelled to have a say…not to have a say, to express their view, on a huge social issue. Today in Italy there are at least seven million part-time precarious workers, and over the new the EU there are, just talking about part-time, thirty million people working part-time. And these people are paid sub-standard wages and are excluded from most basic services, cultural services, and access to media and social participation. So, I mean we think that only ???? social expression through conflict, but, leading the way of social activation together with the traditional political organizations, I mean of course we’re kind of selective, in the sense that it’s a extreme leftist thrust and so only the socialist unions are really are into it anarchist greens, gays, critical mass, bikers these kinds of subjects who are really the ones driving, disobedienti, Indymedia. What’s not worthy ??is that this self-organisation throughout Italy over three months, organized around this holy icon which we called St Precarious which has been very popular, the saint has been present in tons of conflicts all over the peninsula over the last two / three months all over and people more and more know about St Precario...has been a way of showing the power of the multitude, if you want to use those words. In the sense that in Milan we have been much more powerful in terms of social participation, than the traditional unions which have been very much for appeasement in the face of mounting exclusion and poverty not only amongst old people, but among young generations and young families.

P. vM.B. : Johnny is going to ask you a question now.

A.F. : Could you understand what I was saying?

P. vM.B. Very well, very well. Thanks

Johnny Spencer : Hi, its Johnny. I was just curious to know if you’ve had any resistance from the authorities?

A.F. This year, because we campaigned against Sunday openings, and especially Mayday openings. So, in the morning we picketed the whole city, and the largest chain stores who announced the public they would be opening, in fact they had to shut down. And so especially the city authorities, and especially you know the Berlusconi fascist government runs the city here in Milan said loud words of condemnation saying that we were some precario criminals and this and that. But so far, I mean we have played it aggressively enough, but not so much destructively to be persecuted, there is some minor persecutions about picketing and some blockades, but so far we have managed to avoid the worst. Its vital that in fact to be protected, for a political organization in a way to throw an umbrella over you of indulgence at least. So its important to work with rank and file organizations around you.

P. vM.B.. : Jakob again.

J.J. :Could you define a little closer the difference between the knowledge workers and precarious workers?


A.F. : I don’t know what kind of sociology you have studied there but here I studied Castellis and this and that, and what you see over a comparative study of advanced capitalist countries is that over the last twenty years two groups in services have enlarged, at the top and at the bottom of the service sector yknow. Sales operators, truck drivers, logistics, personal services, social services these are the jobs that have lost out they have undergone the worst corporization/pauperization(??) over these years, right. And then at the top there is a strongly individualised yknow so – called ‘creative’ class of people producing basic input for the system. These two strains have so far been very far apart, but over the last three years the crisis of the new economy, and the internal crisis within neo-liberalismin our view, I don’t know if we’re right, have shown, yknow computer programmers, they are easily substitutable with computer programmers elsewhere in India, so they’ve realized, finally, that their interest doesn’t lie with corporate interests or stock options. So, I think all of us, yknow, either you’re a computer programmer, either you’re a cashier at Tesco’s, you don’t know whether you have a pay cheque next month. This is what social precarity is about. There is a definite ??? Mayday, so far has been this, to unite service workers and knowledge workers in a common route of struggle and a process of multiplication of conflicts.

P. vM.B. : Alex, I wanted to ask whether you subscribed to this idea that has been discussed a lot, after September 11th, and maybe also because of a perception of activism as more symbolic than to rooted in the local that a sort of self-assessment is taking place o the part of activists, also to do with how they build alliances, who they build alliances with and whether any fragility has been set up by the sort of ‘polymorphous perversity’ cutting across all movements whether that has possibilities to weaken it because actually sometimes people don’t know who they’re building alliances with? Sorry that’s about two questions…I’d be interested because…

A.F. :...Sure. Yeah. Most people in the movement, not really opposed it, but thought it was a hopeless cause, yknow labour and all this was old hat. In a way they were more interested into playing media stunts that do, ..??? in which media activism plays a large role. The point is, the process has set? Itself, in that it was really, at least in Italy and in Spain and in France, a problem that had to come out into the open. I mean all these young people…[break]

A.F. :…founded in 1995 after the French big strikes is also taking part. What’s interesting is that if you interact with actual people, moving on conflicts then in a way this force compels the other ? structures, the organizations to follow along, instead of the opposite process that we saw in the 20th century. For example Tutti Bianchi, Disobedianti, who have been symbolic of the general movement, first were’nt so much into the process, this year have been with us for four months since the boat strike in Venice in the winter and then with the big commercial strikes that followed in the sense that also we founded this organization called PreCogire? ?it’s a space of discussion for all activists working in precarity in Italy. Now we’re trying to establish a network of information centres and legal help, and collective solidarity crews so to speak, flying picket lines stuff like that. So, in the end if it works people get in, if we want to give reality an ideological interpretation it doesn’t work that well. It’s a process of trial and error to find the right social claims to fight for the organizational forms networking situations and strategies…

P. vM.B. : You’re doing so well we’re slightly dumbfounded.

A.F. : We’re centred in a neighborhood in Milan thats called Isola, I mean I invite you all to come, we just opened a hostel, there is really an epicentre of activity. I mean our identity is basically temps working in the media industry, computer hackers, and then people working in the transport, people working in the Milano Fair doing stands or people working in the concerts, stage hands stuff like that. So we try to develop, at first a strong presence in a neighborhood that has a radical tradition, try to be effective at a city level, but never neglecting relations with other subjects similar to us across Europe, and with Italian movements which has a complex dynamic and a powerful presence in Italian society. I think June 4th, I hope we demonstrated we’re still alive, I hope.

P. vM.B. : At the moment it seems like the common ground is Europe – have you tried to create other linkages with groups in America?

A.F : In our crew there is …. Giorgio who is linked to the attempts at unionising Starbucks or other strikes of course there’s the big Californian supermarket strikes earlier this year. But so far only with the retail worker we have scattered … can happen would be great. Also we are writing these mags with gabinger ? and kenra in Amsterdam that;s called ? magazine and it is going to feature a special issue on precarity and so we are looking for articles on the American experience. Over more organising and stuff consumer awareness all that stuff. No but with les intermittents we’re going to Paris – and I invite you all to go Paris for June the 26th because they are going to celebrate their first year of organising and we are thinking if we can do you know a common european process of activation there is a certain strong moment in every country. Let’s say for New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen because there is the fight for Kristiana, May Day in Paris, Barcelona, women and precariousness stuff like that. You know there is an exact white collective that is part of chain-workers that this year that these political parties that jump on the bandwagon of Mayday trying to subtract it for us. We have declared we work on that women’s day also to rescue that holiday I mean I cannot talk much about it you’ll have to ask my girlfriend Zoe how in fact precarious is impacting women today, how liberal feminisim is not able to talk about social exclusion. This is basically what Movinas. next week in Bologna will meet all the all the pre-cards To decide about this sub precarial chain about points over the terrirtoy . Let’s meet, let’s meet in Turin, Paris, midway in London for the Forum to talk about opportunities for cross-solidarisation.

P. vM.B. : Excellent.

A.F. : Pronto?

J.J. : can I .. you people who go and do these pickets in front of supermarkets, are you yourself living this kind of precarious life, going between jobs and so on and so forth, what kind of backgrounds do you have?

A.F. : Sorry I didn’t get that – I understood it was about pickets but I didn’t get the rest

J.J. I’m just asking in a way a personal question, what kind of backgrounds you have in this struggle?

A.F. :Usually we are contacted by people invited to the site who tell us there is a situation of victimisation, of mob?, of being set up … from this mailing list, we have the news of Zara, you know, the emerging Spanish retail fashion chain, that there have been abuses, there have been fights because they them got pregnant and stuff like that so you know that kind of stuff. So we went with the pink block and the samba band, a kind of procession, we broke into the store and we paraded for half an hour, and then we picketed the entrance, we wouldn’t let anybody in so eventually they had to close it down for the day and then the process was repeated for the Mondatori bookstore and for the place next door because these were the stores really downtown nearby the Duomo where really the last stores opened in the city.. and so, basically, what we try to do is make it not too aggressive so workers don’t get scared. Consumers we don’t care so much, in the sense that we don’t have much respect for people that think Mayday is a day to go shopping. We try to explain our case, but in the end we do not let people in. But we try to make it creative but firm, in the sense, you know, to have soft appearance but hard resolve.


J.J. : So you have an office where…?


A.F. : Yes, we have an office in this squat and every Wednesday from 7-10, our lawyer and our agents and the union delegates we work for are there to support people that have been fired.. from hotels…. for example, there was an hotel worker and a tv studio person there that came in yesterday. I mean this is like really the latest stage of our work because until now we have been scattered organising this territory, and trying to connect all the dots in the city. In the north, we have two delegates in the Ocean, it’s this French chainstore, there’s people working in this other chain in the north east, you know, it’s a bit of trying to mesh in and weave in all these micro networks.

J.J. : You are working together with traditional unions as well?
A.F. : Traditional unions in the retail sector are fairly corrupt in Italy and they hate us because, for example, when there is a strike nobody goes on strike, we are the only ones trying to put some pressure on these large employers. Let’s not forget H&M, Marks &Spencer and all these guys, they have nowhere to go, it’s not like a factory that when workers demand higher wages they shut down and re-locate in China. I mean these are people that cough up cash because they are appropriating urban resources of all of us. Traditional unions think that we are a pain in the ass also because, so far, they don’t really care so much about young workers because they figure that in Italy, they stay with the family, so even if they were paid below the minimum wage, nobody has to complain about it. So in terms of that, Italian society is really blocked. I mean, we have the lowest birthrate in human history and that’s glued to the fact that
young people do not have access to social services and work for parents I mean basically, the minimum wage in Italy is around 5 Euros even for people who get out of college

… hello?


J.J. : The chainworkers isn’t like a union where you can become a member, it’s more like an office facility and a way to mobilise direct action. You’re not structured like a union.


A.F. : No no .. we consider ourselves as a union sabotaging agency. We are more like media activists, that’s closer to our political reality. But since unions have been unable to provide effective answers, we have also started sometimes working along more traditional organising. For example, the Italian metalworkers union this year, the big one, the biggest official radical union so to speak participated in Mayday so we were happy about that. I mean they won in a strike against Fiat in Malfi an important strike with two or three weeks of pickets We look a lot to union parts, but we do not have much confidence other than in smaller organisations more able to organise horizontally with us. Say I mean smaller unions like [Coup bas so coup]. They are a splinter union from an official union. They have been gaining incredible strikes in Al Italia, in the schools and in other sectors of society. I mean, unions here are stronger, they have been
co-managing neo-liberal reform so far, so effectively conflict was abolished in Italy. So we are trying re-ignite this force from below.

(long pause)

So not everybody’s happy about it!


Maybe … ain’t you bored of listening to this spaghetti talk?

J.J. : We have had this discussion whether precariousness is a new kind of situation or this kind of precarious work has always been done.

A.F. : No, it has always been done but before contingent work was peripheral to the process of accumulation. It was first with the Japanese model that the peripheral workforce started emerging as a functional element in justifying production in the 70s and so on but then suddenly a ? used existential instability is present in no professional figures even at top corporate echelons. I mean ANYBODY can be fired at will. I mean, it didn’t used to be that way, that’s for sure. If you look at the culture of the valley of the northwest of, you know, of Cambridge programmes, it’s a totally individualistic libertarian culture, but then after forty, you don’t know how to take care of yourself, you know. We’ve been buying in this fast and burn culture but now the downsides are apparent. For example, Amazon.com workers have been striking over, you know, abysmal conditions. Wastaq.org [??] in America. has been trying to organise information workers. People who have been selling their talents individually have to realise that of course strength is in collective action and on the other side, if they do not support collective movement of the service or factory workers that have a lonbger and hbetter tradition of organising .and conflict, then I mean no social reform, no post-industrial better society will ever emerge. Because We are likely to be subsumed into I don’t know into corporate consent, into deviance that doesn’t have any figures.\
Radical identity is just like a che guevara t-shirt. It doesn’t have any effect. 34;44

J.J. : I’m a little bit interested … we are more or less cultural workers here and you’re talking about linking up, unionising and media activism - and the media activism sounds similar to cultural work in a way…

A.F. :…sure it definitely is, most art today… I don’t know if you agree .. is almost activism…

J.J. :…yeah but we had these discussions whether we as cultural workers were quite privileged – and as a point of departure how we could talk about precariousness when there’s people who are much more.. like.. in the shit than we are - and there were these debates about whether we were patronising people who….

A.F. : …I think ….35:44 If you strike a desk or picket the Tate gallery that’s when you’ve really short circuited society. I mean cultural consumption and everything? consumption being blocked – that’s really a major achievement. I’m a member of the middle class, I mean I come from a middle class family but I think that middle class activism brought down the Berlin Wall. We don’t have to be ashamed of what we are – we just have to try to connect with other social forces that like us, are interested in social progress and in totally subverting neoliberalism which has now become naziliberalism (laughter) …36:34…. has made it harder for all of us. I don’t know, in the service industries? the started with a? shift in the Popular front – the progress of the popular front is based on an alliance of the creative class with the service class otherwise it’s a Darwinian world awaits all of us – I don’t want to be catastrophic but sometimes I am, especially these days….. As artists, intellectuals, as polygots we have a responsibility in having up?? a true European movement, a social and civic society emerge? – that’s our responsibility vis-à-vis the rights?. I mean that we’re the only ones who really have and power??? with the technocrats, the corporate elites, with state elites – you know, we can shame them (laughter), we’re the ones who attract media? conflicts, that’s a good way of filling the horizon with people…

Pronto…

J.J. : yes I think we are, well… are there any more questions…

Merlin Carpenter: … yes, I have one. Hello, my names Merlin, just following on from what you were saying before..you were saying that you can imagine…or you were implying that you weren’t going to develop into a traditional union. But can you imagine a more traditional or long term union arising for example, shopworkers – coming out of what you’re doing - or do you think it’s a completely separate thing…or is that not necessary.

A.F. : I totally believe that a mutation of unionism like the one we had in the 1930’s – where industrial unionism was born is necessary, for example it’s ridiculous that in a Mall all workers are not represented by one union – I mean they work in the same physical place! Why? Or for example, why can’t a union cover all the supply networks of a given manufacturing plant and so on and so forth. So definitely, I think that traditional unionism is over and restructuring and re-organisation along new lines of economic accumulation? is in order. But today, people do not project their identity on labour – I mean they might spend most of their daytime working but their identity is made in social relations, in communication, in their leisure time and that’s really were the unions really lost their grip on society. I mean they provide modes of on socialbility,