Affect industries

"I have a dream: I want to go to Germany and stay there for a while. There you can earn some money and learn German along the way. But no, the other girls stay here at Slavocovce and get their unemployment-benefits. And then a boy shows up and says `marry me´, and then the kids are coming. And that is what live is all about?

Trabajo flexible ¿Es que somos invisibles? Trabajo inmaterial ¡Ay que estrés mental! Trabajo de jornalera ¡Eso es la repera! (Little song by Precarias a la Deriva in the General Strike of 20 June 2002)

THE PICKET-SURVEY

Precarias a la deriva (Precarious women workers adrift) is a collective project of investigation and action. The concerns of the participants in this open project converged the 20th of June 2002, the day of the general strike called by the major unions in Spain. Some of us had already initiated a trajectory of reflection and intervention in questions of the transformations of labor (in groups such as ‘ZeroWork’ and Sex, Lies and Precariousness, or individually), others wished to begin to think through these themes. In the days before the strike we came together to brainstorm an intervention which would reflect our times, aware that the labor strike, as the culminating expression of a process of struggle, was unsatisfactory for us for three reasons:

Remember MAYDAY, the global holiday of workers, dear to anarchists and socialists worldwide, born in America and mummified in Russia and China, fallen in neglect in Europe as neoliberalism mounted and many unions sold out? Well, in Milano since 2001 a network of Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish media hacktivists, rank-and-file unions, self-run and squatted youth centers, critical mass bikers, radical networks, student groups, syndicalist collectives, immigrants' associations, assorted commies, greens, anarcos, gays and feminists have given life to a MAYDAY PARADE taking place in the afternoon of May 1st, whose participation and meaning has grown tremendously from 5,000 to 50,000 people, thereby triggering many urban actions and social conflicts that are spreading among young temps, partimers, freelance and contract workers, researchers and teachers, service and culture workers in Italy, France, Spain, and elsewhere across Europe.