January fms 2017

"We are 300. What can you do for us? We plan to come and meet you. But first, tell, what help can you bring to the workers?"

"Why would an active gathering of 300 ask anyone, 'what you can do for us?' Is there something you find lacking in this assembly?"

"Lack? Where did 'lack' come from? We keep the management tense all through the day. It's a battle between them trying exhaustion on us, and us pushing tension on them."

"What an amazing image of workplace you've drawn. A battle between exhaustion and tension. It cannot come from lack for sure. Then what is that's making you search for help?"

"Well, then you can say we're asking for help to enhance the collective happiness of this gathering of 300, and through them of many, many others connected to them."

"You create some rather abrupt detours! Happiness can be mobilised to think about many deferred ways of living and thinking. It can bring into questioning the persistence of keeping the present hostage to future happiness. But, again, this can't be a reason for asking for help."

"Reasons? We can list a few. Fear. Being dismissed. Being attacked by bouncers inside workspaces. Threatened by police in accelerated situations. We feel that some relief can come from people who claim to help workers. People who can bring in some pressure on the administration."

"And then? A spiral of dates and assurances? Dispersal and exhaustion? Is there anything else that comes to mind when these 'helping hands' take over?"

"No, not much else. No, haven't heard of much else resulting. But maybe with us it will be different. We 300 are different. We're a courageous lot."

"Why take your courage and transfer it into someone else's strength? Maybe there are other ways to take the spunk of 300 to many; from 300 to 3000, to 5000, to 15000?"

"We do understand that it is through lot of mutual sharing between us that we became 300. We have an image of each other, and of 300. We know that many others are connected to this gathering. But the image blurs. It's difficult to conjure an image of the felt - but not so visible - connect. Maybe, you can help here!"

"This seems pretty far from the language of help, helpers, and their procedures. This is about how to transmit audacity. A question that we all keep battling with."

"There is beauty in this relay, this transmission of courage."

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (Faridabad Workers’ News)
Issue # 343
January 2017

Page 1: Audacious Ones, Begin the Transmission of Your Daring
Page 2: It Is Ordinary; Twisted Logic; Increasingly Insecure Companies; Weakening Companies
Page 3: Steps in Common; Commoning
Page 4: Worker Activities in Bangladesh; Question & Answers

PDF enclosed.

Contributions welcome

We currently print 16,000 copies at the monthly print cost of Rs. 14,000/-. We are able to meet this through contributions. To sustain us, you can send a bank transfer. Please write to us, and we will send you the bank details.

Distribution is over one month from 25 places in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Manesar. Through this, we enter into thousands of conversations. Please write to us if you would like to join us; we will let you know of the place and time.

January 2017 Fms by baatein1 on Scribd

December 2016 fms

“These must be good days for you, given your obsessions with mystery novels?”

“Why not! These are days of mystery; everyone is a protagonist and a reader rolled into one.”

“The question is: What kind of protagonist? And also, what mystery are they playing into?”

“In this mystery, non-human protagonists play at par with the human, collide with the human, and blur the line in between.”

“Who are these protagonists?”

“Electronics, digital, bank, cash, ATM, password, cards.”

“Hmm. So these have displaced the vintage ones: Food, Clothing, Shelter.”

“Hah! Those overflow. Everyday we walk on roads, past row upon row of shoes, of clothes, of eateries, of empty buildings. These protagonists have fallen weak; they have been sidelined by the new ones.”

“Everyone seems to speak of figures like 15 lakh crore, as if they can see them. Amazing.”

“This is what I draw into my mystery novel. A sense of a new spread. A sense of connectivity, scale, and speed that everyone seems to talk and think with. A new affect has taken over. I wonder, why not think this outside money, without money.”

“Whoa, what a sudden out of joint spin! As if you are possessed by that ever-curious questioner: the eternal, the undead, Betaal.

“Ha ha. Yes I guess I am. Betaal stands in disjoint to time and to our daily acceptances, and queries us to examine values, ourselves, and life. Today, in our immersion, it is best to recall that spirit.”

“Let me message my friends and ask them to play ‘becoming Betaal’, and send me questions, out of beat, out of turn, out of time, like Betaal has been posing them.”

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (Faridabad Workers’ News)
Issue # 342
December 2016

Page 1: Betaal Asks: Why Not Reject Money?
Page 2: Of Irrelevance of law; When certainty is uncertainty, then why fear.
Page 3: Twisted logic to twisted logic; Increasingly insecure companies; Commoning
Page 4: Report from Mayapuri Industrial Area, Delhi; The Shimmer of Self-Activity

PDF enclosed.

Contributions welcome

We currently print 16,000 copies at the monthly print cost of Rs. 14,000/-. We are able to meet this through contributions. To sustain us, you can send a bank transfer. Please write to us, and we will send you the bank details.

Distribution is over one month from 25 places in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Manesar. Through this, we enter into thousands of conversations. Please write to us if you would like to join us; we will let you know of the place and time.

December 2016 Fms by baatein1 on Scribd

November 2016 fms

“How are you?”
“I am now a runaway.”
“From what?”
“From work.”
“Runaway?”
“I have rejected time.”
“Rejected?”
“Like when products get rejected. Shirts. Pants. Mobile phones.”
“So?”
“I reject time. It is also a product that needs to be rejected.”
“But why runaway?”
“Because runaways can sing for everyone.”

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (Faridabad Workers’ News)
Issue # 341
November 2016

Page 1: “I Hereby Reject Time”
Page 2: To Argue, To Get; Factory Reports; Weakened Companies
Page 3: Games Middlemen Play; Insecure Companies; Commoning
Page 4: In Step with Self-Activity.

PDF enclosed.

Contributions welcome

We currently print 16,000 copies at the monthly print cost of Rs. 14,000/-. We are able to meet this through contributions. To sustain us, you can send a bank transfer. Please write to us, and we will send you the bank details.

Distribution is over one month from 25 places in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Manesar. Through this, we enter into thousands of conversations. Please write to us if you would like to join us; we will let you know of the place and time.

FMS_Nov2016 by baatein1 on Scribd

October 2016 fms

"Listen, friend, let's summarise."

"Summarise what?"

"An unfolding that is transforming the actual and virtual landscapes of work and life."

"Eager. Carry on then."

"An 18 to 20 year old enters a workplace -- as a temporary or as an apprentice. Explores and creates many relationships. These start from departments, move to shifts, extend between shifts, stretch in travel, enlarge across neighbourhoods, and proliferate in phone groups. These happens over days, occasions, months, a year or two years and more, between thousands. Bonds thicken.

They deepen. Gather speed.

Conversations, repartee with supervisors, frictions over production targets, arguments about disciplinary codes, defiance of rules, discontent over canteen food, and many more moments. Seepage spreads and cracks deepen at the work site."

"This is the general milieu. As always.
What's so significant now?"

"The loss of control over workplace is palpably felt by management. This is the general milieu. Everybody knows, this is how the managerial occupation of production is forced to loosen its grip.

Sudden stoppage of work, refusal to do overtime, sporadic lengthening of lunch or tea breaks, increase of product rejections, becoming mute in oral confrontations. This moves like a wave, resonating and engulfing."

"And then?"

"And / or / with…
A decision to not leave the factory.
Attack on factory buildings.
Company eases tensions through concessions.
Police and bouncers attack workers.
Mass dismissals."

"And / or / with?"

"The wave swings to other factories. Like recently, when women workers in Bangalore went from 4000 to 100,000 within hours, and took over the city. The concessions achieved were a gain to millions of workers."

"Or?"

"Shrink to 40. A process of dissipation and exhaustion through procedures of petitioning, and a wait for the benevolence of administration to intervene."

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (Faridabad Workers’ News)
Issue # 340
October 2016

Page 1: A Diagram of Self-Activity, Actual and Virtual
Page 2: Legal Cracks Grow; Corruption & Co.; Dates-Dates-Dates
Page 3: Security Workers, Insecure Conditions, and Other Reports
Page 4: Bonus: How to Hack It

PDF enclosed.

Contributions welcome

We currently print 16,000 copies at the monthly print cost of Rs. 14,000/-. We are able to meet this through contributions. To sustain us, you can send a bank transfer. Please write to us, and we will send you the bank details.

Distribution is over one month from 25 places in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Manesar. Through this, we enter into thousands of conversations. Please write to us if you would like to join us; we will let you know of the place and time.

October Fms 2016 by baatein1 on Scribd