Better late than never

Meant to put this up earlier:

Film screen­ings: the pre­car­ity of labour
April 10 (that’s tonight), 7.30pm
140 Barkly St, Brunswick
(one block north from the cnr of Lygon st and Brun­swick rd)

It has been increas­ingly noted from research centres to news­pa­pers to rad­ical pub­lic­a­tions that work in the globe’s wealthy coun­tries is chan­ging. In Aus­tralia, cur­rently 30% of the work force is cas­u­ally employed – which is to say, without a secure, per­man­ent job. On top of that, hous­ing is less afford­able than ever, there are more work­ing poor, large levels of ‘under­em­ploy­ment’ and ‘dis­cour­aged job­seekers’, and greater levels of debt and uncer­tainty. This has been called the rise of a gen­eral situ­ation of ‘pre­car­ity’:

“Pre­car­ity is a con­di­tion of exist­ence without pre­dict­ab­il­ity or secur­ity, gen­er­ally with regards to an indi­vidu­als mater­ial or psy­cho­lo­gical wel­fare. Pre­car­ity increases in late-cap­it­al­ism as nations shift from man­u­fact­ory to ser­vice and inform­a­tion based economies.”

In many ways, this pre­car­ity is the result of the struggles of people against cap­it­al­ism and the lim­ited world of work: against the mono­tony of a 9–5 job; against the wel­fare state’s coer­cion; against the sterile con­fines of every­day life in this world we fine ourselves. It could be seen as a response to recu­per­ate vari­ous struggles, and to turn them from threat to benefit.

Sweat­shop Cinema presents an even­ing of screen­ings and dis­cus­sion to explore these issues, as well as the ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes work under cap­it­al­ism. We will be screen­ing three short films, and hold­ing a facil­it­ated dis­cus­sion after­wards ini­ti­ated by a number of work­ers from tem­por­ary, casual and pre­cari­ous indus­tries around the chan­ging nature of work and life in Australia.

The Films:

• McStrike: McDon­ald work­ers go on strike and occupy the premises for six months; 
• French Cul­tural Work­ers Struggles: Actions against the pre­car­ity of the French tem­por­ary work­ers from the cul­tural sector; More info on French cul­tural work­ers’ struggles: http://​www​.wsws​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​0​3​/​a​u​g​2​0​0​3​/​f​r​a​n​-​a​0​4​.shtml
• Inter­view with Chain­work­ers: Inter­view with Alex Foti about the his­tory of the Italian Chain­work­ers Crew. 

[nb: text by Nik]