Forget Unions, Try This Saint

Marta, 26, could never find a proper job since she graduated in visual arts. She earns some money from video editing, working eight hours a day, with no paid holiday.

(An article by Stefania Milan, Inter Press Service)

MILAN, Apr 30 (IPS) - Marta, 26, could never find a proper job since she graduated in visual arts. She earns some money from video editing, working eight hours a day, with no paid holidays.

”We lost the rights workers have been fighting for over the last two centuries,” she told IPS. ”Traditional unions cannot do a lot for us. We do not even have the right to strike.”

Marta is one of about three million 'precarious' workers in Italy. These, Marta says are ”normally young people, with temporary contracts, no paid holidays, high turnover, no social security.”

About half of all jobs offered in 2002 and 2003 were 'precarious', the independent Italian social research agency Eurispes reports. This has huge social consequences, it says. ”No mortgage, no family, no possibility to 'grow up'.”

This ”precarity” (precariousness), as the activists call it, is a European trend. On May Day 'precarious' workers will march in several cities all over Europe, including Helsinki, Barcelona, Hamburg, Liege, Ljubjana, Sevilla, Milan, Copenhagen, Maribor, Paris, Amsterdam, L'Aquila, Marseille, Wien, London, Stockholm, Napoli and Palermo.

The 'Euro May Day parades' originated in Italy four years back, and have got bigger ever since. Temporary workers, part-timers, those doing shifts at McDonald's and other such stores will join the march to demand new social rights.

”We are calling for a universal social income,” Francesca Bria, one of the organisers of the Milan march told IPS. ”This mobilisation gives voice to the movements of the precarious workers searching for a new representation in the labour market but also in society, because their condition is first of all a social problem.”

As with Marta. ”Living in such uncertainty, with the constant fear of losing even the little work we have, does not permit us to plan our future,” she said.

The protests take creative forms. In Italy, the precarious appointed a saint to look after them -- San Precario (St. Precarious). ”San Precario, give us today our paid maternal leave, protect all employees of commercial chains, and the angels of the call centres,” they pray.

San Precario 'appeared' first in 2004 after an invocation by flex-workers. He rapidly began to inspire all kinds of protest actions like demands for free shopping in Rome, free transport to participate in May Day events, and distribution of pirate CDs.

A figure of the saint, dressed sometimes as a McDonald's employee, sometimes as a call centre worker, is carried around by devotees at their protests and at prayers for ”income for all.”

There will be special prayers for protection from ”gloomy dismissals” at the May Day parade the saint will lead in Milan this time.

In Spain, San Precario will become Nuestra Señora de la Precariedad (Our Lady of Precariousness) at May Day protests in Barcelona and Sevilla.

Inspired by Christian iconography, the figure of Nuestra Señora has the olive skin of migrant people: in fact she was 'born' in Sevilla, close to the Gibraltar Straits, where many North African migrants arrive in search of a better life, but end up exploited under illegal contracts.

In London, probably the most expensive city in Europe, precarious workers will be offered a coupon to travel free on public transport on May Day. According to national labour statistics, 31.9 percent of Britain's workforce survives on flexible and temporary contracts.

”The work imposed by capitalism has become more casualised, forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market,” the London group organising the May Day protest said.

”In the age of precarity we are asking for 'flexicurity' -- flexibility but with a minimum of social security,” Marta said.

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