The suffering caused by the changes in the organization of work in the last twenty years, particularly in large corporations are already embedded in the lives of millions of workers. The human costs resulting from restructuring, mergers, closures and relocations, it must now add the most violent and destructive of that suffering: the suicides on the job.
With the advent of Taylorism workers already suffered the consequences of the fragmentation of manufacturing processes and its division into repetitive tasks. These new methods were intended not only increased productivity. Reflect the will of capital, not only depriving the workers of the fruits of their labor but also their physical and mental energy and knowledge.
Fordism was the capital's response to the increasing willingness and ability of workers to organize within and outside of work and to withstand the most extreme forms of exploitation. With the neo-Taylorism, the capital - thanks to new methods of "management" - not only has strengthened its control and its hegemony over the production processes and workers, but also, has become more widespread and exten-Diender a planetary level, beyond borders and continents. ("Not only are we witnessing the end of history but also the end of geography" - Paul Virilio). This new Taylorism, or "management" in the American, it unfolds in two areas: the intensification of production and the conquest of new markets on the one hand and, on the other, the control and subjection of the worker these goals ...
Hélène Heuillet As highlighted in the review of the book by two French sociologists ("Suicide et travail. That faire? PUF Paris in September 2009), these new methods originate disorders posicológico order to go beyond "mere" suffering at work. So far, remember, the worker - even under tight control, developed forms of support and solidarity that somehow allowed him to protect. Out of office or factory, in addition to recovering what the researcher defines as a form of "eccentricity" a "breathing space" that only belonged to him. The new "management" not only seeks to impose more intense pace of work and objectives increasingly difficult to achieve. It is also designed to break, through different scientific methods, the old forms of solidarity that weave themselves in among workers. Consecuenia imposes a climate of "challenge" permanent and interpersonal competition, which affects all categories. Not only the employee and the worker, but also the coach and the executive. The former "team spirit" is beneficial for production, but dangerous for the possibilities of autonomy and capacity for initiative that offered the employee has been terminated. With a single goal: to reduce to end their "breathing space." The introduction of rigid production processes based on a total disconnect between the design tasks and run, degrade the edge allowed the individual sense of work well done and prevented the emergence of forms of solidarity, either explicit or cloaked.
Hélène L'Heuillet gives us in his review your interpretaación this extreme act, the suicide at work, as it closely linked to the emergence of these new forms of organization. According to her, "human subject" at being unable to "bury" or go unnoticed ("pour faire are trou") in the shop or office, has no alternative but to "be removed from the world ..." suicide. And throws us a message or a warning: we can all be stripped of our humanity, that bastion permitre we live or continue living.
Suicides in "France-Télécom
In France, the wave of suicides caused by these methods, had a strong resonance in the media and public opinion to the point of provoking an intervention by government. Since 2007, suicides were multiplied in several large companies, particularly in the privatized companies as Renault, EDF (Electricité de France), and especially France-Telecom.
The latter company, with over 100,000 employees mostly officers, was privatized in 1991 and launched a fierce competition for leadership, which imposed drastic changes in your organization. In a traditional concept of public service companies, spent no transition to a competitive model at all costs, based on commercialization of its "products" and a mobility and a permanent change - both internally and geographically - of its staff (each three years for executives and five for technicians).
In 1990, its CEO publicly referred to "fashion" of suicides. Four days after this declaration, an employee of France-Télécom jumped out the window of his office. In the course of the year and a half, there were 23 suicides, qualified this time of "accidents." Until March 2010, the director was sacked and his replacement officially deplored the effects of stress arising from the "management" and stated its willingness to negotiate with the unions a new organization and "put the man in the middle of work" .
makeup of offering a new discourse on "human capital growth of the company" did not fundamentally change the work climate in France-Telecom. At the end of 2010 there had been 5 new suicides. Moreover, during the past five years, the company's 75,000 employees had been forced to change jobs, mostly to priority sectors such as trade. As for retirees, especially officials, were replaced gradually by youth with precarious contracts, accepting and working overtime on Saturdays.
The reason for these changes was summarized in a statement the new director: "We are a private company, we operate in a highly competitive industry and must make profits." As suicides stated: "We are faced with personal dramas, a priori, have nothing to do with our company. "
The price of the Chinese economic miracle
Suicides in the work are not obviously a social phenomenon that affects only a particular country, but the extreme consequence of new forms of work organization that adopts the transnational capital to capture new markets and dealing with its competitors, to maximize their benefits, to extort money from workers and take away their ability to resist.
The great "brands" that operate worldwide, have adopted and generalized these new methods. In particular those operating in the next calling themselves "The great factory of the world ", that is China. So, Apple, Dell, Sony, Havlett-Packard among others, operate and assemble their products in the territory chino.Las industrial plants that manufacture electronic components for these companies belong to a group Taiwanese used in Shenzhen, a huge industrial center located 40 km from Hong Kong, with 420,000 workers.
Nobody had talked about this center, neither the press nor the western China, had it not been for the wave of suicides and social conflicts that have affected workers. What are the causes of these deaths?: the lives and working patterns imposed by the multinational employees of the Taiwanese firm operating in China (manufacturer, among others, Apple I-Pod.) Most FoxCom employees (all aged between 18 and 24 years), working under unbearable pressure, six days a week, 16 hour days and earned wages that were initially 100 euros per month. After the scandal and the reactions to these deaths, wages were increased by 20% initially and later, 66% to 245 euros per month.
qu Needless to say, China is abundant in such conflicts and dramas. In any case, Shezhen is one of the clearest examples of the conditions under which it is developing the "economic miracle Chinese.
Other countries, others killed by suicide
would also cover the case of Japan, which registered in 2009 a total of 269 suicides in the job, officially recognized as occupational diseases. " The Japanese government, modestly, pledged to combat this phenomenon "fighting unemployment and controlling the working methods of the enterprise."
seems that in Spain, this phenomenon does not exist or has not transferred until the Wall information. We can however recall a conflict that once had a great impact until, after waking the interest of newspapers, was virtually ignored in their consequences. We refer to the struggle of the Sintel workers who had - apart from the loss of their jobs - a dramatic finish. Eleven workers were killed, seven and four suicide because of stress caused by having the city who improvised in the center of Madrid.
David Antona González
Taken Rebellion
