A-Infos (en) France, OCL-Lamouette Enragee: A publication from the Christian weekly La Vie about the workers' survey (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

For us, the surprise is all the greater because it came from where we 
least expected it... The Christian weekly La Vie devotes a detailed 
article on its site to the recent publication of our workers' survey. 
----- A redoubled astonishment at the fact that in our circles, interest 
in what we insist on calling the working class has disappeared as 
urgency and the molecular have taken precedence over history, the social 
revolution and class... The proles have become obsolete, exit the proles!
For a long time to come, we will remember the cultural shock caused by 
the meeting we organized in Lille between a group of striking auto 
workers and local radical activists (1). "You didn't come here to sell 
us cars!» one of them had said to the few strikers from PSA Aulnay who 
had made the trip. "Because you think we were given the choice to work 
in the factory!? ", one of them calmly retorted... The contradiction was 
posed, the debate will continue in the afternoon during...

These are all too rare moments which, among other things, convinced us 
of the necessity and merit of embarking on this investigative work.

So, when a Christian newspaper like La Vie relays this, we can only 
congratulate ourselves and thank them!
------------------------------------------------
A new workers' survey by La Mouette enragee

A group of anarchist communists from Boulonnais publishes a work on the 
life and current working conditions of workers and employees of 
companies in Hauts-de-France. Militant and documented.
By Dominique Fonlupt

The port industrial zone of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where part of the survey 
work was carried out. * E. GRAVES
They met at the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), during the 
blockades against pension reform in 2010. They were both 22 years old. 
Fabien held his first position as a history and geography teacher, 
Arthur was completing a master's degree in professional contract in a 
fishing waste recovery company. Together they joined La Mouette enragee, 
an anarchist communist group which has published a newspaper of the same 
name since 1992, still available on newsstands in Boulogne. They want to 
be the heirs of an old anti-authoritarian tradition specific to the port 
city.

Dynamics of social movements
Not enough to foment a revolution: if there were up to eight in the 
group a few years ago, there are now only four, including Arthur, who 
left to work in a resource center in Marseille. But they believe in the 
dynamics of social movements to "overturn the balance of power".

Their conviction: work is a political issue because it is at the heart 
of the capitalist system. "The question is never discussed in circles 
that think about the ecological transition," regrets Fabien, now a 
teacher in a college in Lille. This partly explains why the climate 
emergency is not a priority for workers.»

The members of La Mouette enragée embarked between 2017 and 2023 on 
carrying out a "worker survey" which reveals the working conditions of 
employees at the bottom of the social ladder and the salary scale, in 
companies in Hauts-de-France and Brittany. The fruit of their work 
appeared under the title Before going around the world, going around the 
workshop... (Acratie, 2023).

Since Marx and Weil
The group is part of a tradition that dates back to the beginnings of 
industrialization. The first worker surveys were carried out by senior 
civil servants, engineers or doctors like Louis René Villermé, who 
published a book in 1840 on textile factory workers. In 1843, the 
socialist feminist Flora Tristan toured France with a view to "the 
current state of the working class in the moral, intellectual and 
material aspects".

The most famous workers' survey is the one that Marx published in 1880 
under the title "The Workers' Survey" and published in The Socialist 
Review. The Belgian Joseph Cardijn, founder of the Christian Workers' 
Youth in 1925, places investigation at the heart of the Jocist method. 
We also think of the writings of Simone Weil in 1950. The tradition 
resurfaced in the 1960s in Italy, France, and England, with the desire 
to carry out a reflective inventory carried out within the working 
world, a tool in its own right for the class struggle and not a 
sociological study with scientific pretensions.

Logistics and call centers

The Mouette enragée team met several dozen women and men working in the 
private sector, of all ages, on fixed-term contracts, permanent 
contracts or temporary contracts. In the North, these jobs are held by 
the children and grandchildren of generations employed in coal, textiles 
and the steel industry. They all describe how Taylorization colonizes a 
large part of the service industry. This is the case in the logistics 
sector, the fifth largest recruiter in France, with 1.8 million jobs, 
four times more than the automobile sector. We read in the book the 
responses of employees of Vertbaudet, La Redoute, Amazon to a very 
precise questionnaire on the company, working conditions, money, 
hierarchy, colleagues, struggles.

Around twenty call center employees agreed to answer questions, 
depicting a "digital but not virtual proletariat", "a trend towards the 
social deskilling of work which validates the disappearance of the 
profession in favor of the job and the function interchangeable".

As for agri-food production, it occupies a dominant place in 
Hauts-de-France, where it employs 70,000 employees. In Boulogne, 
France's leading fishing port, workers in this sector are concentrated 
in the Capécure industrial zone, which brings together 150 companies, 
the leading seafood processing center in Europe. Everywhere, the work is 
hard and the turnover rate is very high.

Abstention and sanction vote
"We were surprised by a constant almost everywhere," notes Arthur: the 
equipment is poorly maintained. Tools break down very often and their 
obsolescence is the cause of workplace accidents. You might expect 
manufacturers to invest in machines to increase productivity, but no. 
These are pushed to the limit, like the bodies.»

"We also discovered that there are many small gestures of resistance, 
even if employees are often proud of their company. There are many 
walkouts for salary increases during mandatory annual negotiations, or 
to obtain additional breaks during the heatwaves. However, if they are 
aware of being exploited, they are not aware of belonging to a social 
class that could be a political actor," adds Fabien. Hence the 
abstention and the sanction vote.

"I became politicized with the CPE (first employment contract, specific 
to those under 26, abandoned following huge demonstrations in 2006, 
editor's note), says Arthur. This was our last victory. Since then, 
social movements have only suffered failure after failure. After 
demonstrations which nevertheless mobilize crowds, people return to 
work, disappointed. Either they will no longer vote, for the most part, 
or they will vote for those they have never tried."

I support Life

https://www.lavie.fr/actualite/societe/une-nouvelle-enquete-ouvriere-signee-la-mouette-enragee-94046.php

https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/post/2024/04/27/3626/
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