#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #GERMANY #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) Germany, FAU, direkteaktion: TRACKS OF WORK - THE PODCAST -- How crappy working conditions became a radio drama series -- Culture Business & Society Traces of Work By: Jona Larkin White (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 This is a personal report about bad working conditions, a corona disease, first

industrial action experiences and the invitation to listen to our first DA
podcast. ---- WAGE WORK AND COVID DISEASES ---- In April 2021 only a few older
people had the opportunity to benefit from a vaccination. I wasn't one of them.
The disease hit me unprotected and violently. Although I'm still quite young and
fit, I couldn't get out of bed for four weeks, only going back to exercise after
five. But compared to other courses I was lucky. I could taste the whole time,
have no secondary diseases. Along with the vaccinations, my body should now be
very well equipped with antibodies. Actually I have no reason to complain. But I
do it anyway - for the reason that I got infected. Because I was not able to get
a home office for my wage work and had to commute despite being asked, I most
likely got infected. (All the people I had contact with other than at work were
negative. At the same time as and after me, a large number of colleagues in "my"
former company fell ill.) With a less resilient body things would have been worse
and at least I know from a colleague that he suffered long-term damage. He also
most likely caught Corona in the same office as me. I often wonder how many
people have died of Corona and got infected while doing paid work or on the way
to it. Even if I've been lucky, I complain when I think about my medical history
because it reminds me that I live in a system that values me only when I'm in
paid work; and who only thinks it's a pity if I die because then I won't continue
to work for wages and pay taxes. At least this is the between-the-line message I
interpret from all the Corona measures that only affect private rather than work
life. I am aware of this degradation of myself and everyone else, but feeling it
so personally and close to my own body is a transformative experience that makes
me cry, publicly complain, and hate.

Despite this, I was relatively calm at first. I gathered information from various
people, perked up at the conversation about things I wasn't supposed to know
about - and found that the reason so few of us were being sent to work from home
was financial constraints the company was (I hadn't thought about how much home
office space costs before). Our company was on the verge of bankruptcy during
Corona and due to a loophole in the system, home office positions were still not
subsidized by the state. So I initially blamed the state for the misery.

My call center career was short-lived. I only got to know the company during
Corona times, i.e. with few people in the office - several home office positions
could at least be created. A thankful circumstance; but also one that limited
contact with the employees and isolated me. I had already handed in my
resignation due to poorly implemented austerity measures, which made my work
massively more difficult, and for other personal reasons, and counted the weeks
and days until my last working day. During this time I happened to meet a
colleague at a demo that I had never met before. She told me that she is in the
home office and can cycle to work in ten minutes. She's about my age and if she
had a medical condition she probably would have mentioned it. Up until this
interview, I had been fine with being forgotten about the home office positions
as I figured others needed them more. As I found, this was not the case.

MY LAST WORKDAY
In order to save on staff, the management forced us to telephone clients for whom
we were not trained during the off-peak hours. The work, if one is not trained,
cannot be compared to normal work. I've always broken an acting branch, not to
let it be known that I have absolutely no plan of what I'm actually supposed to
tell, at the same time I had to somehow manage to distract the caller with a
conversation in order to gain time to talk to me casually look up information
about his question.
If I couldn't cover my insecurities, I had to lie that I was just a temp and
arrange a call back (which doesn't do people any good when they need information
at the moment). If I was unlucky, customers would yell at me for spending money
on a phone call that didn't answer their question. The bad thing is I couldn't
blame the angry callers. Pretty much everyone in the company hated these off-peak
hours. That's why my strike demands, which I sent to the entire workforce via the
company's internal mail system on my last day, related almost exclusively to them.

On my last day at work I went to the office on time with cake, booted up my
computer, sent off the mail with my strike demands with the note that I would go
on a wildcat strike for eight hours on my last day at work because of the bad
working conditions[1], ran out of the building and joined me in front of the
office building with my strike sign, loud music, my printed out strike demands
and a few FAU comrades. The recruiter who was present that day didn't find it funny.

My biggest concern with the campaign was that the crappy working conditions for
my ex-colleagues change with the off-peak times. Since the works council
unfortunately forgot to tell the workforce, I didn't know that it had already
been decided to abolish off-peak times. Thus, the demands of my organized refusal
to work were already fulfilled. After a few discussions with the HR manager, we
downgraded very slowly and leisurely. We spoke to a few colleagues who complained
about other bad working conditions. So it was clear with our FAU working group
that we wanted to continue.

TRACES OF WORKING AS A PODCAST
Since then we have made several attempts to organize, but not very successfully.
If the management should read this, I don't want to comment further. I can only
say so much about the failure so far that I always had the impression that my
ex-colleagues - and thus they should represent so many people - are not aware of
their own power, which they have as a united, have organized workers. In
addition, they don't see a great need, even if many people hate their work there.
Who defines themselves through their wage work? The topic is decoupled from the
rest of the living environment, four to eight hours of lifeless, sold time and
then one continues studying, drinking a well-deserved after-work beer or getting
involved in the district meeting place. But all the sold lifetime is essential.
How many hours did I spend exchanging views with my colleagues about the shitty
working conditions? How many times have I dreamed of giving the same information
to people calling me over and over again? And how often did I drive home the
summer before last because I couldn't work properly in the off-peak hours?
Activism can be more than a leisure activity after wage work if it starts with
precisely this capitalistically structured livelihood.

After the industrial action in the call center came to a standstill, a good
friend happened to tell me that he had bought books and showed me traces of the
work. I've always had compliments on my voice in the call center and lately I've
not been averse to Verton projects.

Traces of Work is about the experiences of workers from their perspective. Their
suffering, but also their struggles, are emotionally expressed in the anthology.
(Here's our review.) I think it's a way to read through dozens of non-fiction
books and essays by trained theorists on the importance of working class. Another
and more than just complementary is to listen to the voices of the workers and
thus of ourselves, so that we understand that it is we who make this society
possible. We should be proud of that, stand by ourselves and our rights - and
demand them!

So we invite you to listen to our first DA podcast here. The soundtrack is
dedicated to all call center employees. A new chapter appears every Monday.

On February 16, 2023, a podcast realization audio event will take place in the
Theater der Gezeiten (Schmechtingstr. 38-40, Bochum) at 7 p.m. You are cordially
invited.

Bibliographic information:
Mark Richter, Levke Asyr, Ada Amhang, Scott Nikolas Nappalos (eds.). Traces of
work, stories of jobs and resistance. Publisher Die Buchmacherei. September 2021.
260 pages. ISBN 978-3-9823317-1-3, 14 euros.

https://direkteaktion.org/spuren-der-arbeit-der-podcast/
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