SELF-ORGANIZATION AND PRECARIOUSNESS

Job growth during the last decade represented a growth in flexible precarious job conditions

By Klaus Doerre

[This article published in: ver.di Perspektiven, 2/8/2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.linksnet.de/drucksicht.php.]

The phenomenon of precarity focuses attention on the return of social insecurity in the rich and secure societies of the West. Unions should develop an effective policy of de-precarity.

Until recently, only experts knew the term “precarity”. Now it is the talk of the town. In its original meaning, precarity could be translated as “insecure” or “delicate.” Currently precarity is used to thematicize the spread of insecure job- and living-conditions. Job growth during the last decade represented above all a growth in flexible precarious job conditions. Low-paid activities, contract- and part-time work and limited employment are included along with mini-jobs, dependent independence and work opportunities promoted as social policy. Precarity does not inevitably mean absolute poverty or complete social exclusion. Rather precarity points to the return of social insecurity in the rich and secure societies of the West.

As a result of the weakening of social security systems, most European work societies are divided in three zones. The majority of employees at least in Germany still live in a zone of integration with full unemployment benefits and halfway intact social nets. Below them, a zone of precarity grows that is marked by insecure employment and perforated social nets. At the lower end of the hierarchy, a zone of uncoupling arises where socially isolated groups without a chance for regular employment are found. There is no exact data about the extent of precariousness. The fact that every third person is in a non-standardized job relation only provides rough evidence because precarity processes often occur within formally protected employment. The up elevator is very slow; the down elevator is much faster.

Three crystallization points of precariousness can be distinguished. Firstly, there is the complete exclusion from regular paid work. For minorities, the distress of not finding a job is transformed subjectively into a virtue. With continued unemployment, unwillingness comes out of incapacity since exclusion can only be endured for so long. Secondly, there is permanent precarious employment. Whoever permanently depends on insecure jobs finds himself in a strange suspended state. Modern precarious workers including disproportionately many women and migrants are often maids for everything. They perform jobs with little acknowledgment, low pay and trifling job security. For them, paid work is no longer the basis of a future-oriented life plan. Their planning horizon covers days or weeks. If they slacken in their efforts, falling in the zone of uncoupling threatens. Thirdly and lastly, the collective fears of falling of regular employees are also a crystallization point of precarity. Whoever loses his job at Deutsche Bank and is over 45 will have great difficulty finding equivalent work.

The anxiety that this could happen triggers primal fears in groups that threaten to lose their connection to the social middle. In that regular employees are daily confronted with uncertain employees, precarity intensifies a trend to production of flexible employees. Nevertheless precarity is not a practical necessity that must be accepted as fateful. For a long time, the economic effects of insecurity could not be ignored. The loyalty of employees toward firms declines, work motivation suffers and quality deficiency increases. Unions should develop an effective policy of de-precarity. Legal minimum wages and basic social security could create lifelines. Unions should promote the self-organization of unorganized precarious workers. Exchanging experience across borders would be a first step.