GlobalTemp

From “On Quitting” by KEGURO MACHARIA

“Something has happened to a sense of security (can I use that word?) or safety that I hold on to, a safety blanket, a fantasy that life was once not like this, that life can be unlike this, even as this feels much too slippery to describe, a feeling of tottering toward an undisclosed location in the securitized state.” 

Stated by State Rep. Ponka-We Victors (D), a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, to Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach

think-progress:

— Native American lawmaker

Ambivalent article on the dangers of temporary work for the “racialized” and “flexible” workers, who can more easily fall victim to workplace or employer abuses, but also for the existing laboring populations whose stability is threatened by the influx of temporary workers.

… on the cusp of Canada’s “baby bust,” a “migrant worker boom” is underway. Since 2006, the number of “guest” workers has surpassed that of economic immigrants who can become permanent residents and ultimately Canadian citizens. This policy shift not only increases the vulnerability of these workers, but also undermines wages and conditions for all workers in Canada

This U.S. based non-profit organization formed following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, to represent the displaced and underrepresented guest worker population integral to the Gulf Coast economy. 

It now represents guestworkers throughout the U.S. and helps workers to organize and engage in activism against workplace abuses, migration rights, and fair living conditions.

From their About page:

Hundreds of thousands of workers enter the United States every year on temporary visas through the U.S. guestworker program. They work in critical industries, from landscaping to construction to education, in deeply exploitative conditions that frequently rise to the level of forced labor and involuntary servitude.

The National Guestworker Alliance (NGA) is a membership organization of guestworkers. Our members organize in labor camps across the United States to win collective dignity at work. We are building national power to win fairness in the terms of migration. We also partner with local workers—employed and unemployed—to strengthen U.S. social movements for racial and economic justice.

Photo Credit: LouisianaSeafoodNews.com (linked from original article)

The H-2B visa program, which brings temporary agricultural workers into the U.S., is rife with abuses. 

The H-2B visa program that brought 83,000 foreign guestworkers to the U.S. in 2011 for non-farm work has become a stalking ground for some of the worst abuses in American capitalism, according to recent reports by anti-poverty law groups. These reports describe in excruciating detail how predatory capitalists in many manual labor-based industries (supplying national brands like Walmart) lure and prey upon foreigners whose jobs average less than $10 an hour with little regard for human rights, labor law or legal consequence.

From the Serpica Naro English Facebook: 

After his triumph as the icon of the Italian movement, Saint Precario generated an anagram of his name: “Serpica Naro”, embodied as an Anglo-Japanese female virtual fashion designer. As a new patron saint of workers, Serpica Naro occupied the center of a memorable hoax against Milan’s Fashion Week in 2005 where she managed to get a catwalk and media coverage as a real fashion designer. At this event Serpica Naro (www.serpicanaro.com) condemned the conditions of precarious workers within Italian fashion industry and has been working since on the concept of open-source brand and empowerment concerning the subjectivity of workers in the creative industries.

Socialist anarchist workers activist group based in Dublin, Ireland. 

From their About page:

The Workers Solidarity Movement was founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1984 following discussions by a number of local anarchist groups on the need for a national anarchist organisation. At that time with unemployment and inequality on the rise, there seemed every reason to argue for anarchism and for a revolutionary change in Irish society. This has not changed.

Like most socialists we share a fundamental belief that capitalism is the problem. We believe that as a system it must be ended, that the wealth of society should be commonly owned and that its resources should be used to serve the needs of humanity as a whole and not those of a small greedy minority. But, just as importantly, we see this struggle against capitalism as also being a struggle for freedom. We believe that socialism and freedom must go together, that we cannot have one without the other.

Anarchism has always stood for individual freedom. But it also stands for democracy. We believe in democratising the workplace and in workers taking control of all industry. We believe that this is the only real alternative to capitalism with its on going reliance on hierarchy and oppression and its depletion of the world’s resources.