I am getting to this waay late. I just read Bashkar's essay. Yes this division between precariat and salariat is silly first of all, and damaging or obscurantist.
The division between low tech, casual labor and high tech or more experienced hired on the cheap by contract isn't that much more meaningful.
What we are really looking at is a full spectrum shadow labor force. It is reflected in the stats as underemployed. I am part of the precariat or underemployed as a month to month, half time contract employee with no benies, no security, and no concrete ability to carry out my job which includes dealing with management.
>From November through December I shared work space with a temp hire
receptionist. She was working week to week through an agency. She was in
desparate straights. The first few hours she was there, I realized she had
no money and was trying to get her sister to stop by and get ten bucks to
get home on the bus for the next few days. We were outside taking a break,
me smoking, her on the cell phone. I went off and got a couple of
hamburgers, chips, cokes, and ten bucks...
A friend of mine has been on adjunct temp hire semester to semester for more than five years. He teaches first year chemistry, chemistry for non-majors and an occasional general ed nuclear science class at Cal Poly.
There was also no mention of the casual immigrant labor hired off the street, usually for dirty jobs in construction.
The institutional explotation is found in these temp agencies. What they charge is not what they pay the temp, which is lower or much lower. So there is a whole industry that exploits sectors of this labor force. Like the labor it exploits, the agency system is multi-tiered. Instructors, programmers and engineers don't stand on street corners.
``I should welcome commentary announcing the rise of a new post-Fordist actor. Jacobin's dictionary...'' Bashkar
Shadow Labor. It comes from the movie Army of Shadows about the French underground. Shadow labor is not new and has been much of the working class in other parts of the world. I suspect it was this class that were drawn into the proletariat in the 19thC. The real bottom of shadow labor are the slave and quasi-slave traders where people sign up for work, pay a fee and take steerage to another country for which they are in debt. There are documentaries glore about this shadow force on AJE.
So, yes:
``The pre-Fordist nineteenth century city central, the alliance between the employed and unemployed, and most often forgotten, the importance of a workers' party, still the best vehicle for forcing universal concessions from the state..''
Workers' parties are a fine idea, independent of the job site, which also escapes direct suppression. I am not sure you can fire somebody for belonging to an organization outside work. Of course no employer needs a reason anymore, anyway...
CG