||||| MAYDAY ! MAYDAY |||||

Call­ing all casual, flex­ible, temp, con­tract and part-time work­ers, those bored in the dole queues or res­ist­ing mono­tony in McJobs. And any­body else con­cerned with the polit­ical con­di­tions of employment.

May Day (May 1) is tra­di­tion­ally a day to deal with labour issues in soci­ety. This year it’s on a Sunday, so it’s time to have a really big party for it. 

Start the day with Morris Dan­cing, because we have friends who do it and we need to sup­port them… even if they are doing an Anglo-Celtic tra­di­tional thing that offi­cially belongs in Spring…

When/Where?
May 1 | 11am | Fed­er­a­tion Square | Flinders & Swan­ston Sts | Melbourne

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After that, head to Trades’ Hall to take part in the May Day March, fol­lowed by a festival.

When/Where?
May 1 | 2pm | Trades’ Hall | Rus­sell & Lygon Sts | Melbourne

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In the even­ing, join us for a night of film and dis­cus­sion about pre­car­ity and the uncer­tainty of life in cap­it­al­ist post-modernity. 

More info:

ROUND TWO – Cas­u­al­isa­tion, pre­cari­ous lives and waged labour.
An even­ing of screen­ings and discussions.

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’, more people on med­ic­a­tions and
greater levels of debt and uncer­tainty. All this leads to a precarious
state of affairs.

We want to explore the chan­ging nature of work and exist­ence under this
new régime of (un)employment. We want to ques­tion what tac­tics might be
useful in trans­form­ing this situ­ation as the eco­nomy shifts from
man­u­fac­tur­ing to ser­vice- and inform­a­tion-based labour. How can we
approach the situ­ation without resort­ing to calls for 40 years of
work­ing full time in the same job?

On Mayday, Sweat­shop Cinema presents round two of screen­ings and
dis­cus­sion to explore these issues. We will be screen­ing a short films
and hold­ing a facil­it­ated dis­cus­sion after­wards ini­ti­ated by Lynn
Beaton, who has con­duc­ted extens­ive research in the field and John
Davis who will regail us with tales of his attempts at uni­on­ising at a
call center. All this and much, much more!!

When/Where?
May 1 | 6.30pm | Irene Ware­house | 5 Pitt St | Brun­swick (one block north of glenlyon and lygon)

Mayday films flyer | Eur­oMay­Day | More info on precarity