Introduction

The following questionnaire was produced by the Slovenian socialist research organisation CEDRA (Center for Social Research). We are reproducing this survey, which CEDRA discuss at length in Notes From Below issue #23 Infrastructure: Fault Lines and Frontlines, as an example of workers’ inquiry in action. Although focused on the experience of work in retail, the political framing of this inquiry can be utilised or adapted, and the questions it poses carefully considered, in any and all capitalist workplaces.

Workers’ inquiry is not a static, formulaic tool, rather it is always malleable and open to evolution. While CEDRA’s project follows the familiar lines of a series of questions, probing into the realities of work, health and struggle which shapes the everyday lives of supermarket workers, they also utilise the questionnaire to really push worker self-investigation into the social and political reproduction of the world we live within. As their italicised notes show, this is not a supposedly neutral survey just looking for ‘facts’. It is militant and partisan. The questions, posed in dialogue with an interviewer, are intended to crack open the certainties of capitalist life and reveal the power workers have to contest ‘the way things are.’ Question 6, for example, gets to the heart of the matter: how does the unpaid care work which the working class is compelled to take on - primarily done by women and always profoundly gendered - shape our experiences of paid work, and possible avenues for organising. The desire to secure free time, space for leisure and the resources to actually live amidst our work hours, flows throughout and provides an image of what a collective, expansive struggle might be working toward.

The penultimate question of their survey (8c) is primed for political activity. All the sociological detail which has been meticulously tracked across the previous questions spills over into the necessity of action and commitment. If a fight for a ‘common good’ has been the guiding impulse of their questionnaire, then taking the leap from workplace struggle to wider societal transformation is the logical crux of this exercise. We hope CEDRA’s survey can provide inspiration for all of us to keep pushing and experimenting with forms of workers’ inquiry.

FEMINIST CO-RESEARCH WITH THE COMMITTEE FOR THE COMMON GOOD

CEDRA (Center for Social Research) is a socialist political organization based in Slovenia. With organizing and co-research methods we are trying to organize and politicize workers into a common socialist front. At the moment we are primarily active in the retail and care sectors: working closely with trade unions and workers in Lidl, Tuš, Spar, and other stores as well as working with a union in Fresenius and the leading care and health union in Slovenia. Together with trade unions, we are hoping to build a Front for the Common Good as a force for socializing reproductive work: public services of long-term care and other services. We are also collaborating with the organisations Ambasada Rog and Infokolpa in organizing with migrant workers.

Exploitation by capital in the sphere of production:

We demand a higher salary, which should not be below the current statutory minimum wage. As retail workers, we are dependent on our partners and families, as we find it difficult to survive on our own salary. Economic dependence is a problem in itself: exacerbated especially in the case of domestic violence or the serious health issues of children or other close relatives. The company forges profits at the expense of lowering wage costs, which reduces the interest of workers to work in retail, which leads to a lack of workers, an increase in labor intensity, health problems, numerous illnesses which then burden the health system, and destroy and reduce their quality of life.

By being relocated to remote shops, workers are forced to leave their shop and temporarily go to work in another one. This measure is designed to keep the number of employees at a minimum and to put pressure on workers, who have to adapt to the new situation from one day to the other. The company does not need to hire new people, and the additional burden is borne by the workers themselves. We submit our lives to the will of capital. In the struggle to fulfill our demands, we also struggle to control our own lives.

Oppression by capital in the households (as the primary sphere of reproduction):

Why can’t even domestic and care work at home escape the oppression of capital? “Invisible” work at home - from cleaning, tidying, and cooking, to raising and caring for dependent family members - is a key site that enables and encourages the accumulation of capital. When all this work (which allows us to return every new day fit for and ready for work) is done in the “private sphere”, and mostly by women, capital can absolve itself of any responsibility and involvement in domestic work. But if all of this work had not been done, we wouldn’t have been able to show up at work the next day. Thus, work at home (place of reproduction) and work in the shops (place of production) are closely connected and together they enable capital to extract high profits.

If we want to spend quality leisure time, we need quality and accessible public services for everyone - so that “leisure time” is not devoted to reproductive (care and household) work, but could be spent as actual leisure time. → leisure time SHOULD NOT BE equated with time for caring for the family and the household. Just as socialising reproductive work is a step towards emancipation on the basis of gender, socialising the means of production is a step towards emancipation from our servitude to capital.

Objectives:

• Establish awareness of the issue of exploitation by capital in the context of production and reproduction.

• Establish a working group within the working committee of Red Tuš, which will deal with the issues of patriarchy and social reproduction (We subsequently make a decision on whether the working group becomes a permanent structure):
  Production of a research paper.

You can download and view the full inquiry below: