Care Revolution Rhine-Main network active at strike conference

Several members of our regional network were present at the third strike conference, which took place this year at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, with an information stand and many networking discussions. Central questions were, for example, how can industrial action be better organised and carried out in the future against the background of the current neoliberal situation? Secure and well-paid jobs are becoming increasingly rare and work intensification is increasing in all sectors, so that people are becoming more and more frightened and, with digitalisation and robotisation, it will soon be a privilege to have a paid job... As work intensification shows, the problem is not a lack of work, but the price that is paid for work. The (life) time of people in gainful employment is being devalued. On the one hand, this corresponds to a real reduction in wages, and on the other hand, when people retire, they have not worked for 40 years, but for many more years without receiving the corresponding pension. In addition, gainful employment and mobility are now experiencing an enormous interaction: it starts with commuters who have to travel long distances to their place of work due to unaffordable rents in conurbations. This is valuable life time. Commuters miss out on this time for recreation and family and it is not taken into account in their wages, but is now increasingly taken for granted. It continues with the time that is lost every day in rush-hour traffic jams, e.g. by parcel deliverers or outpatient carers. This time is also increasingly not paid, but has to be "replaced" in some cases by the person doing the work and is thus privately recorded as a "loss" on their own lifetime account. But it is not only in gainful employment that this happens. This devaluation of workers' (life) time also has an impact on non-gainful work. After all, everything that gainfully employed people or those who put their skin on the labour market do remains unpaid. What individuals "invest in themselves" in order to market themselves better has literally led to a self-optimisation mania. How much time and energy is invested unpaid in order to conform to the figure, hairstyle and clothing standards set by advertising and celebrity images. How much (largely unpaid) time and energy is invested in formal and informal training. How much unpaid time that is actually needed for relaxation is misappropriated to do things that are related to gainful employment. Even children are exposed to this pressure, firstly by an education system that sees its main task as producing a marketable workforce, sorted from an early age to meet the needs of the low-wage sector, the growing precariat of the highly qualified and the shrinking remainder for the (still) remaining well-paid jobs. An education system that rewards competition instead of cooperation, but also the pressure from parents who pass on their fear of social decline, poverty in old age and loss of gainful employment to their children, forcing them to become self-optimisers in a society that has lost solidarity. However, many children also grow up with the realisation that they are socially undesirable and at best tolerated. Increasing labour intensification in the production of goods is a problem, both for the physical and mental health of the workers and, under certain circumstances, for the quality of the goods produced. Tired people make mistakes more easily. How much more serious are the consequences of these mistakes caused by fatigue when it comes to caring for and looking after people. When patients are inadvertently given the wrong medication. Or when people "forget" to give them painkillers or other urgently needed medication, for example. When they have to wait for hours so that basic needs such as thirst or going to the toilet can be met because the carers simply have too many patients to look after at the same time in addition to administrative tasks. The example of the successful industrial action at the Charité hospital has shown that mobilising in solidarity can achieve a great deal, even outside the hospital. Even if an industrial dispute takes place in the tense relationship between trade union protest and working with people, as is always the case in the sector of commercially organised care work. Whether in the field of education and social work, care or assistance, it is precisely this mobilisation of solidarity that our regional network wants to promote. As a specific sector, we want to focus on the care sector and support the " Nationwide Endangerment Notification" campaign, which is already in the starting phase and will reach its peak on the upcoming International Care Day on 12 May 2017.