Comments on: The Damage of the Strike http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/692 is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:20:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Ewen Speed http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/692/comment-page-1#comment-57 Ewen Speed Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:11:58 +0000 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=692#comment-57 This is a demonstration of the ways in which discourses of consumption can be seen to operate in the interests of management rather than in the interest of ‘our rights as consumers’. As Lynne rightly states, it is not our rights as consumers that are at stake here, but this is the dominant way in which the strike has been presented. The focus on the disruption that this strike causes to us ‘hard working consumers’, (who are only looking for that ‘well deserved break’), obviates any necessity to consider the dispute in any wider context. By invoking the paying air travel consumers into the centre of the dispute the management line is strengthened, as the management interest is portrayed as only wanting to get those strikers back to work so we (the consumers) can all get back to enjoying our holidays. This representation of the strike functions to characterise it as a process understood primarily from the context of market disruption. It allows for the political nature of the dispute to be marginalised. The disrupted consumer discourse works to appeal to us all, the common bond between us being that we are all consumers and hence all potentially at one point or another affected by these type of disputes. This is the pseudo-democratisation of the consumer, as if being a consumer is the common factor that defines our human experience, cutting across class, gender or ethnicity. It connects with us at an individual level, not offering any other conception of the dispute which might allow us to couch it in terms of a collective understanding of labour laws and workers rights, and indeed to consider how erosion of these rights might have direct impact upon our human experience as workers, not consumers. It would be interesting to see how many newspaper photographs of disrupted airport departure halls feature inconvenienced business travellers in suits as opposed to inconvenienced holidaymakers in jeans and jumpers…but to do this would invoke a element of work into the dominant representation, and that may well undermine all the hard work that has been done framing it as a consumer issue. This is a demonstration of the ways in which discourses of consumption can be seen to operate in the interests of management rather than in the interest of ‘our rights as consumers’. As Lynne rightly states, it is not our rights as consumers that are at stake here, but this is the dominant way in which the strike has been presented. The focus on the disruption that this strike causes to us ‘hard working consumers’, (who are only looking for that ‘well deserved break’), obviates any necessity to consider the dispute in any wider context. By invoking the paying air travel consumers into the centre of the dispute the management line is strengthened, as the management interest is portrayed as only wanting to get those strikers back to work so we (the consumers) can all get back to enjoying our holidays.

This representation of the strike functions to characterise it as a process understood primarily from the context of market disruption. It allows for the political nature of the dispute to be marginalised. The disrupted consumer discourse works to appeal to us all, the common bond between us being that we are all consumers and hence all potentially at one point or another affected by these type of disputes. This is the pseudo-democratisation of the consumer, as if being a consumer is the common factor that defines our human experience, cutting across class, gender or ethnicity. It connects with us at an individual level, not offering any other conception of the dispute which might allow us to couch it in terms of a collective understanding of labour laws and workers rights, and indeed to consider how erosion of these rights might have direct impact upon our human experience as workers, not consumers.

It would be interesting to see how many newspaper photographs of disrupted airport departure halls feature inconvenienced business travellers in suits as opposed to inconvenienced holidaymakers in jeans and jumpers…but to do this would invoke a element of work into the dominant representation, and that may well undermine all the hard work that has been done framing it as a consumer issue.

]]> By: Aditya Chakrabortty http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/692/comment-page-1#comment-56 Aditya Chakrabortty Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:15:22 +0000 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=692#comment-56 A very good point, Lynne, which i duly requisitioned as a talking point for a Guardian podcast here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebusiness Dan Milmo, our transport correspondent, makes the very good point that the vast majority of BA cabin crew are Mail readers who live in Surbiton or other nice areas close to Heathrow. Hardly the stuff of the Militant Tendency. A very good point, Lynne, which i duly requisitioned as a talking point for a Guardian podcast here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebusiness

Dan Milmo, our transport correspondent, makes the very good point that the vast majority of BA cabin crew are Mail readers who live in Surbiton or other nice areas close to Heathrow. Hardly the stuff of the Militant Tendency.

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