Neo-feudalism

Spiked magazine wrote:

'The depoliticisation of unemployment can be glimpsed in various events of the past week. At the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire – from where Tim Black reports for spiked today – there is currently an admirable, principled strike in defence of 647 workers who were sacked. Other construction workers around the country have walked out, too, in solidarity with the sacked workers. Yet this protest stands out because it is so unusual today. The Sky News reporter at Lindsey scoffed: 'They looked like they had walked out of the 1980s…' But he had a point. Serious industrial action is so increasingly rare that it does look to many people like an archaic oddity.
Indeed, such is the lack of political agitation over job cuts that, even as the recession increases its grip over people's living standards, the leaders of big business can openly boast about workers' compliance with wage cuts and hours cuts. '
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Although this is a seductive argument, I think change is afoot.

here are my thoughts:

First of all job cuts just started, so its early days.

The most likely explanation is that the middle & lower class has been fooled in thinking that they are about to join the rich because they have 5000 euros in shares. Most people want to strike it rich & they will work hard and defend the interests of the rich because they think that somehow taxation of the rich will affect them.

Television has become remarkably effective at keeping people zombified.
So do short contracts & easy fire/hire laws etc

It is remarkable that people do not organise to protect their interests, but globalisation is providing a useful excuse for low quality work contracts for most people.

We need to organise to avoid this creeping feudalisation of the labour market..