A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #337 - Before touring the world, take a tour of the workshop... Review of the book of the Enraged Seagull (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

It is a maxim of Benoit Frachon, a young libertarian worker who became 
leader of the PCF, which titles the work published by our comrades from 
the anarchist communist group of Boulogne sur Mer. And that is what this 
work is about: give body and voice to a working class that is too often 
erased, by touring the workshop, that is to say by reconnecting with the 
workers' investigation. ---- This book is not a sociological or 
statistical study on today's wage labor. Beyond the testimony or the 
list of grievances, the objective pursued is the emergence of a word 
which is situated in the class struggle and which participates in the 
reconstruction of a common imagination, of a class consciousness, as is 
very clearly explained in the first chapter devoted to The Workers' 
Survey: its history, its nature, its scope and its necessity, which is 
always repeated according to the changes in wage-earning.
Invested in this project since 2017, at the end of the fight against 
"the labor law" of the Hollande five-year term, La Mouette enragee 
collected the words of employees through an online questionnaire (1) and 
in the form of interviews conducted mainly in Pas-de-Calais, the North 
and Brittany, during meetings or box fights.

Once the why and nature of this workers' investigation have been 
established, the work is chaptered by sectors of activity: the medical 
and health sector (EHPAD, private clinic, midwife, ambulance driver); 
logistics (Amazon, La Redoute, Vertbaudet); call centers; agro-food 
production... But it also contains transversal chapters dealing with 
changes in contemporary capitalist exploitation: uberization and 
self-entrepreneurship; managerial influence, temporary work... With, at 
the end, a summary of elements of response to the questionnaire which 
provides a "look at the living and working conditions at the heart of 
production or services by workers themselves" and clearly shows the 
cohesion of a common experience of exploitation beyond the professional 
specificities of each person.
Each chapter is introduced by a general point on the sector considered, 
with a priority on showing how any activity essentially becomes 
productive of added value. And how, behind the terms of flow, 
digitization or robotization... behind this ideological discourse which 
tends to evacuate the human element from work, this extortion of added 
value is always done as a last resort by an even more rhythmic and 
traced overexploitation of production or service workers.
Thus, digitalization, platform capitalism, or the Uberization of work 
blur the lines between producer and consumer and lead to the erasure of 
wage employment in favor of new forms of "independent workers" or 
"self-entrepreneurs". These new operating statuses produce more ideology 
than income: "90% of self-employed people in France receive less than 
90% of the minimum wage, without the social benefits of salaried 
employment".
Focused mainly on Hauts-de-France, the historic basin of the 
industrialization of France, this book also offers us remarkable pages 
on the incessant industrial conversion of the region. Throughout the 
interviews, it is the story of working families that emerges according 
to modernizations, concentrations, "de" and "re"-territorialization of 
companies. She shows how "capital has long instilled a total social 
relationship in predominantly working-class societies". We thus 
understand how, from textiles or steelworks, to call centers or Amazon 
warehouses, a lineage of mechanisms of ever more intense exploitation of 
labor is established. And this for the profit of the few large families 
who count among the first fortunes of France, while Roubaix, historic 
headquarters of La Redoute, is today classified as the poorest city in 
the country.
But it is not just the steamroller of capital in perpetual restructuring 
that is revealed in this book. Fortunately, the interviews also take us 
into the movements of struggle and resistance in EHPADs (2018), private 
clinics (2021), among Uber delivery people (2021), at Vertbaudet (2023), 
and others. These strikes show us a working class more alive than the 
media let it appear, and a class struggle as close as possible to 
everyday life: "For several years, management has sought to sow discord 
between day workers and those of the night. Afterwards, there are the 
"pro-bosses" and the others, but the lower your salary, the less 
"pro-bosses" you are! Since the strike, the pro-management and 
pro-management clan has crystallized; previously the staff 
representatives were pro-bosses..." (2) Strikes which often concern 
salaries, but which are also imposed according to working conditions, 
and first of all the wear and tear of the bodies which are increasingly 
in demand " People are damaged but do not dare to leave. There are a lot 
of health problems through the carpal tunnels, shoulders, knees. In 
Wattrelos, we carry a lot (...) knowing that there are only manual 
pallet trucks. At the time of sampling, we walk between 22 and 25 km per 
day. (...) So retirement until age 64? They are already killing us 
slowly" (3). But the interviews also bear witness to the processes of 
alienation specific to work: "(...) "now I am my own boss, I can take 
leave or go on vacation whenever I want"[declares this platform 
deliveryman]. His own boss, but he specifies that he is struggling for 
"three platforms at the same time"! Is three bosses for the price of 
none really a deal? Especially since if he "earns as much as in the 
factory, he pays URSAFF and does not contribute to retirement" (...)" 
(4) It is therefore a book rich in humanity as well as in analyzes that 
La Mouette enragee offers us today, and which are worth reading. Better 
yet, if this work could in turn inspire other groups, it would help 
refine our understanding of capitalist exploitation and possible modes 
of resistance, in order to better construct the "science of our 
misfortune". (5) This is what the comrades from Boulogne are now working 
on by organizing a round of debates around the presentation of this 
investigation. Do not hesitate to contact them, their address is on page 
2 of Courant Alternatif.
And for the future they have no shortage of perspectives, particularly 
with a very interesting workers' cartography project that they present 
in the appendix. Because if "geography is primarily used to wage war", 
at a time of the great capitalist rearmament announced by President 
Macron, we always need new weapons for class war.

Saint-Nazaire January 2024

The Enraged Seagull. -Before going around the world, take a tour of the 
workshop...
Worker survey - Testimonies - Reflection 2017-2023

Editions Acratie (in bookstores or to order on 
"https://editionsacratee.com";)

Notes:
1- see the site laclasse.noblogs.org]
2 - p.57, Collective testimony, private health establishment, June 2020 
strike
3 - p.109, Testimony of Anaïs, striker from Vertbaudet
4 - p.92, At random wanderings in "Reflection on the strike of Uber Eats 
delivery men in Boulogne"
5 - In the words of Fernand Pelloutier, kingpin of the Federation of 
Labor Exchanges: "What he (the worker) lacks is the knowledge of his 
misfortune; it is to know the causes of one's servitude; it is to be 
able to discern against what one's blows should be directed" The Labor 
Museum in L'ouvrier des deux mondes, April 1, 1898

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4082
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