WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (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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