atesia/caltanissetta.sicily

text in german

Good News

The workers of the Atesia call Center in Caltanissetta are "on strike". They demand work because they have not received a single call (which are routed somewhere else), and without calls they do not earn anything. Many of them, if not all, have in fact believed the promises of a stable and secure job, that would have changed their life as unemployed in one of the poorest provinces of Italy.

Let's remember the meetings, the visits of a government secretary on an everlasting election campaign, the nonsense of the stupid jounalists of the local press on the "big opportunity for economic and social change", that a call center in Caltanissetta would bring. Let's remember the envy of some minister of state who could not get through with his attempts to divert the investment-manna in a different direction.
And let's remember the smile of the sponsors of the free market: less rules, less laws, less rights, less contracts and all will have jobs and get wealthy.

Today the workers of the Atesia call center see, that their perspective and those of the permanent workers is precarious, that their situation as actual unemployed has not changed, and that the "atypical contracts" are just a way to create conditions of exploitation like in the third world.

But you will ask, where the good news are? Exactly in the fact, that the workers reveal us what stands behind the talk of the bosses, and that they show us how they think about how to organise and struggle.
And the Telecom - the only owner of Atesia - can not allow that. The whole philosophy of the assembly lines in the epoch of the New Economy would fall into crisis, and the attempt of precarisation and cutting of the rights of permanent workers in the sector would come to a standstill.

The workers of Atesia all have the right to get paid. Even when there are no calls, even when they get ill, even when they are on holiday they have the right to get a stable job and a "typical" contract.

That is also in our interest because we do not want that they are becoming "disposable"-workers which can be used against the part of the workforce that is lucky enough not to be employed precariously.

From: Gatto selvaggio, No. 2, November 2001
Email: gattoselvaggio@hotmail.com


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