Labour and the Social Relations of Nature in the Palm Oil Industry Oliver Pye

1. Labour and the Social Relations of Nature in the Palm Oil Industry Oliver Pye Department of Southeast Asian Studies Bonn University

3. Görg/Brand/Hirsch/Wissen: Dialektik der Aufklärung : “Naturbeherrschung vs. Beherrschung der Naturverhältnisse“ - “Societal relations with nature” - “imperial lifestyle – patterns of consumption and production” - “post-Fordist relationships with nature “ - “permanent disputes and struggles between contending actors “ • “Marx’s notion of the alienation of human labor was connected to an understanding of the alienation of human beings from nature. It was this twofold alienation which, above all, needed to be explained historically” John Bellamy Foster • “[the labor process] is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and nature” Marx, Capital • “The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. “ • Marx: Economic –Philosophical Manuscripts • “In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man.” Marx: Economic –Philosophical Manuscripts • “Metabolic Rift”

4. Workers ‘activelyproduceeconomicspacesandscales in particularways (bothdirectlyandindirectly, consciouslyandunconsciously) astheyimplement in thelandscapetheirownspatial fixes in theprocessofensuringtheirownself-reproduction’ (Herod 2001) Global Production Networks are GPNs are ‘ultimately networks of embodied labour’ (Cumbers et al. 2008)

5. Peninsular Malaysia 92 estates 25 mills Sabah + Sarawak 35 estates 9 mills Sumatra 25 estates 9 mills Kalimantan 45 estates 15 mills

6. A precarious labour regime Informal Back-up System: Social precarity: subcontractors, outsourcing, labour agencies, gengs, debt bondage Official core system: Social precarity: permit = 3+1+1, temporary contracts; low wages (piece rate and daily wages) Political precarity: dependence on employer, restricted trade union rights, no school, biopolitical control Political precarity: illegalisation, fear of police raids, arrests, prison, deportation, caning, no trade union rights

7. Table 1. A tentative typology of migration experiences Table 2. Labour Contracts and related Dynamics of Fragmentation • Type 1a) Estate workers: (Umsini1, 3, 8, 9, Tawau1. Lombok 7, Prolific, Tawau) • Legal workers with work permits; large estates or mills; semi-permanent employment (3+ System), direct contract with employer , families, low wages but health security & decent housing on the estate, debt for initial journey but not a major problem. • Type 1b) My friend the Tokey: (Antang 2, Umsini6, Pekalongan2) • Working directly for smallholders or small private plantation:; often legal and with work permit; relatively good wages, working on a longer term basis, often with more responsibility, debt for initial journey but not a major problem, housing and health cover varies • Type 2a) The Superexploited. (Antang 1,3,4, Lombok 2,3, Umsini 4,6,7,10) (Sabah) • Illegalized, working for subcontractors; extremely low wages, living in the forest in debt bondage, Tongko system; Sabah. Dijual, sold on to other subcontractors, debt accumulates, workers kept in debt bondage system and physical coercion to remain working • Type 2b) Young and mobile. (Traktoran 1,2,3,5, Pekalongan1) (Peninsular) • Working for contractors but with permit or semi-legal status; short in-out contracts; relatively high wages, Debt for permit fee that is deducted and for passage. Housing varies with some “living in the forest,” health cover variable. • Type 3 The Outsourced. (Traktoran4, Umsini4(later), 5, Lombok 5) • Shifting strategy, working directly but as freelancers or subcontractors, illegalized. Higher wages, freedom of choice – lari as collective bargaining through mobility, but the outsourcing of risk. Sometimes with initial debt but using the outsourcing system to their own benefit

8. Networks vs. Territoriality

9. Using place and networks to challenge territory (i.e. national scale as scale of ideology)Circumventing the official prescriptions and restrictions regarding permits, passports, health checks, children etc

10. Using networks to abscond and switch employers (lari) lari as flight from surplus labour predicament in Indonesialari as flight from bonded labour lari as collective bargaining with the feetUsing networks for everyday and collective resistance (mogok!)

11. transnational and transgenerational family networks challenging outsourcing of social reproductionproducing transnational scale of experience Bounded, territorialised spaces of control (mill-estate scale) undermined and challenged by migrant worker networks

12. Obsession with wages – labour “is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it”Social reproduction – “He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home“Alienated Relation to Nature – “the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him , that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.”

13. ConclusionsLabour Geography of GPNs: connected groups of workersWorkers react to fragmentation by developing their own strategies and moral economiesWorkers struggles produce social spaces that contravene the utopia of capitalEveryday struggles often beneath public radar Huge transnational organising potential : a question of politicsCombine worker practices of everyday resistance with organising strategies along the GPN

14. Bank workers Retail workers Petrol Station workers Vertical chains in the Palm Oil Global Production Network Food Industry workers Chemical Industry workers Energie industry workers Cosmetic industry workers Oil and Fat Processors Lorry Drivers Sailors Dockers Plantation workers Mill workers Refinery workers