Precarious organizing and beyond: the case of arts and construction industry

Precarious organizing and beyond: the case of arts and construction industry Joana Marques & Luísa Veloso A3S & CIES-Iscte This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 841164 Methodology •Secondary data analysis •Eurostat (Labour Force Survey; Cultural Employment; Industry, trade and services) •INE – Portuguese National Statistics Institute •Unions Reports •Interviews with key informants •Digital Ethnography ISA Forum 2021 2 The Construction industry • Labour-intensive sector •Providing “employment for those with little education or skill , many of them from the poorer sections of society” (ILO 2001) • Highly fragmented production process , based on "long and complex subcontracting chains as well as of the use of agency workers, self-employment and transient employment” (Danaj & Sippola 2015) •Unskilled, low-wage and and physically demanding/ insecure jobs •High labour mobility in face of immobile products ISA Forum 2021 3 The Construction industry in Portugal • Mobility as amode of regulation (Marques et al 2021): internal mobility through daily or weekly commuting & cross-border mobility (often alternating with other activities particularly related to family farming) – associated to a certain kind of “nomadism” (Pinto and Queiroz, 1996) •Increased fragmentation and flexibilization of the construction industry, through a division of labour based on subcontracting chains ,resulting in increasingly temporary, mobile and insecure employment • Labour shortage :“Portugal is in need of 100.000 workers since a large part of its workforce is abroad” (interview with Portuguese Construction Union, September 2020) • Illegality :“In the field of construction in Portugal, we think that 40%of workers are illegal, it is not precarious, it is illegal!” (interview with Portuguese Construction Union, September 2020). ISA Forum 2021 4 The Arts sector • Highly qualified professionals •Labour hyper-flexibility , “as if the art was a fermenting principle of capitalism” and the artist an exemplary figure of the new worker, functional to the global economy (Menger 2003) • Precarity as a mode of regulation : various atypical forms of performing artistic work – selfemployment, freelancing, part-time, flexible work arrangements, unwaged work – associated with instable, insecure, intermittent work and the absence of social protections •existence of a reserve army of artistic labour •widespread image of the ‘artistic self’ and artists’ belief that they consciously choose uncertain and underpaid working conditions, for offering autonomy, freedom and self-responsibility (Loacker 2013) •the process of differentiation of the artistic labour market, with enormous inequalities in terms of success and remuneration, leading to an apology of inter-individual competition • Lack of traditional forms of workers’ organization (unions) ISA Forum 2021 5 The Arts sector in Portugal • Structural precarity has been chronically exposed, including “invisible” non-creative professionals in the art worlds (mediators, operators, technicians) - absence of government response and illegality related to bogus self-employment •Reference private cultural institutions took advantage of the crisis to advance neoliberal agendas of cuts and dismissals. • Growth of collective structures (union, social movements, associations, collectives), which relates to: •The process of decentralizing responsibilities in the artistic domain that were traditionally assumed by the public sector •Precarity and lack of options in terms of wage labour. ISA Forum 2021 6 Comparative macro Outlook ISA Forum 2021 7 Mobility and abscence of a stable workplace WORKPLACE ECONOMIC ACTIVTY Employer's Premises or Own Premises Home Clients' Place Not Fixed or Other No Response Total -All Nace Activities 78,0 2,3 8,3 7,3 4,0 Construction 23,9 - 54,3 15,7 5,6 Arts, Entertainment and Recreation ; Other Service Activities; Activities Of Household And Extra -Territorial Organizations And Bodies 79,4 3,7 10,7 3,2 3,0 ISA Forum 2021 8 Source: Eurostat ▶Literature shows the importance of having a stable workplace for the development of solidariees and the formaeon of poliecal subjects. Table 1. Persons in in Construction, Arts and Total Employment by main Place of Work (%, Portugal 2019) Independent work and bogus autonomy ISA Forum 2021 9 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Total - all NACE activities Construction Arts, entertainment and r ecreation Source: Eurostat; INE Fig. 1. Share of the Self-employed in Construction, Arts and Total Employment (%, Portugal 2011-2019) Concluding Remarks •Despite representing two distinct sectors of the workforce, they present a set of similarities that challenge the possibilities of workers’ organisation and mobilisation: •the temporary, project-based nature of work, •the precarious employment arrangements, often informal/ illegal; •the mobile nature of work activities, not linked to a fixed workplace. •associated to precarious organizing •These workers and their organizations make a dense case for observing simultaneously the ongoing transformations and precarization processes in the world of work and, on the other hand, contemporary forms of workers’ collective organization , as well as the challenges and constraints they face. • Next steps: In-depth analysis of collective forms workers’ organization. ISA Forum 2021 16 Thank You! ISA Forum 2021 17 Joana Marques Luísa Veloso [email protected] https://a3s.webnode.pt