Women and Immigrants: Marginal Workers?

Abstract

Women and immigrants are largely unqualified, i.e. unskilled, workers, and a clearer picture of the characteristics of their involvement in industrial conflict will therefore be obtained by an analysis of the situation of women and immigrant workers within the fragmented and repetitive production process and also of their particular struggle. Calling into question as they do a system of negotiation between capital and labour that is based on the buying and selling of skill-level and in which they can have no part, unqualified workers reveal by their actions the basis of the prevailing system of production on lack of skill. The worker is plainly reduced to a role as a mere force of labour over and above any ideological considerations the aim of which is to value work as a means of allowing the worker to have some control over his own exploitation.