Many of us are engaged in teleworking. We have addressed this without any choice, due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Has this new work organization come to us to stay?

I think so, and for many reasons. Firstly, because in general the workers want to continue with it, even if it is not full-time. The surveys carried out in France in the first confinement show this – and, on the contrary, they focused on unfavourable conditions, on teleworking, to which a greater part of the care provided by women had to be added. However, many see it as a right that businesses have to recognize, and trade unions are also reflecting on it.

Maybe because not everything is bad.

It has individual benefits and they are pending. But collectively, teleworking has serious and worrying consequences. Firstly, it moves workers away from each other. Videoconferencing meetings are not enough to guarantee solidarity or to help the newcomer – not forgetting the importance of exchanges that appear in informal times –. On the other hand, the limit between work and absence of work is no longer clearly established. I think we should be vigilant. I hope that the unions not only look at working conditions, but look at the problem more broadly. The question they should ask is as follows: what kind of relations do we want – each with respect to oneself, to others and to the world as well?

In addition, we enrich the great owners of the Internet, including the Quinteto GAFAM – Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. At least we will have to demand minimum requirements for them, right? Let us put an end to tax evasion.

The struggle is absolutely political. The Quintet GAFAM should respect international and local laws. It's no coincidence that Twitter and Facebook announce that they'll generalize teleworking as soon as lockdown begins. What do you mean? We are facing a new social dumping. Industrial multinationals relocated factories in countries with fewer social rights and fewer salaries, and that is the same as with burumuins. Facebook will be able to employ a high-skilled worker in India, but with a much lower salary than in the case of California. That is why we have to think twice that teleworking is positive before we say it. Teleworking opens the door to global competition.

Are there alternative tools for teleworking?

I have no answer. But if it's not today, it'll be tomorrow. In order to ensure distributions, as did the emergence of cooperatives that secure decent wages, the alternatives will also flourish in teleworking. The problem is that they will be in the minority, because the strength of the GAFAMA is enormous. But the fact that the relationship of force is unequal does not mean that we do not have to try.

The Instagram picture, the Netflix show at night, the GPS created for the mountain march -- you say all that's a job.

In the book En attendant les robots, written by Antonio Casilli, divide the “click work” into three great blocks: services provided by platforms – for example, the Uber driver – microlan or done from home online and with clicks – for Amazon Mechanical Turk; and internet cleaners, who identify and remove images of murder or violence – essential and with an absolutely humble job. These platforms need us as consumers and also as producers. Every time we post something on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, we're working for and for these platforms. I use the notion of “consensus producer”. We don't ask them about payment, because being seen and being shared makes us happy. It's also harmful and it's vicious, because we get used to working to the limit, and we get used to the invisible nature of work.

The perception of time also varies. Everything goes at great speed.

Production and consumption are very close or at the same time, which harms not only work, but also life. The difference between the private and professional spheres is becoming more and more diffuse – we see it clearly with teleworking. The risk is that work is increasingly taking up space and, furthermore, as we have said, becoming more and more invisible.

Starting from the notion of neoliberalism, you're bringing neolanism to light.

Neoliberalism is the current form of capitalism; compared to liberalism, the state has a very important function, we are not by invisible Adam Smith. We're also in exponential technological change. In the history of capitalism there have always been technological changes, but since the 1950s they have been produced at a dizzying rate. We can highlight three changes: robotization, the numerical era, and algorithms. In the workplace there are large changes, which I call the notion of neolana. We are, of course, in a deterioration of our relationship with work.

What degradation?

We are in the individualization of work. Travailler sans les autres, Danièle Linhart? The book explains well that the objective of the rupture of the work collectives has been clearly established and theorized since the 1980s and 1990s. Wages and careers are increasingly individualised and we have internalised competition between workers. Thus, the collective fades away and social struggles weaken again. Independent or autonomous professions have multiplied, and they are no longer marginal. The rhetoric of independence attracts young people. We also have to take account of this reality: we will have to invent new frameworks to guarantee a number of rights in offering the flexibility they want.

That idea of independence can be perverse.

It is obvious. There is a will and an ideology of the employer in the liver and our goal is to internalize this imaginary. We must not lose sight of the fact that the idea of independence implies the disappearance of rights and support. Of course, you don’t have bosses, you can organize the schedule… in part it’s true, but not at all. For example, digital workers have no bosses, but the algorithms are governed by the precepts that have been provided to them.

It also mentions as a mutation the development of subcontracting.

We are in a new dualism of work: we are outsourcing unprofitable activities. What are they? Cleaning, laundry, computer services... that is, essential but not profitable. On the one hand, official work is of benefit; on the other hand, the trap, badly paid, secured by women and racists, and which is invisible – they come to the factory tomorrow or at night, without anyone crossing. In addition, subcontractors lower prices as much as possible to cope with competition and work under very precarious conditions. This two-speed work is not sustainable, even more so because of their responsibility for the art of life.

But the precariousness and exploitation of this field of work is not something new...

It is true that the fact that the surveillance sector is structurally undervalued is not something new. What happens is that they are now left in the hands of others, thus increasing their profits. Social contempt for these professions is not new, but what is new is that they are structurally avoided.

He also deplores the work of the extreme destajo that the Neolan carries within himself, in French tâcheronnisation, “the work of the extreme pawn”.

The division of labour, very productive, is at the heart of capitalism. But the great social reforms and the 1944 Philadelphia Declaration of the International Labour Organization have made us disappear, at least in Western countries. But with freelance staff, digitalisation of work and platform development, we find the result wage again, whatever the time we spend on it. As for clickers or peones, they are merely executors, they are not asked of any capacity and they are substitutable. It is absolutely alienable this work of banishment carried to the extreme.

He says these peons are “classless proletarians.”

The field of the neolan is totally individualized, and there is also the social atomization realized among society. In the 19th and 20th centuries the classes were clear: the bourgeoisie and the working class. I believe that there is still a class of bourgeoisie that defends its solidary privileges, and that the working class is disappearing, at least in the West, is part of a wider class that we call the middle class. This middle class is not necessarily combative, the feeling of class has not necessarily developed, and yet the situation is getting worse: in addition to the pressure of unemployment, extreme work makes the situation even harder.

The book mentions the importance of the critical spirit and disobedience, because in the Neolanate there are also some mechanisms of authoritarianism.

I know it's not easy, because the Uber driver or the Amazon dealer has financial needs. But I think it is extraordinarily urgent.

The Internet users we're working on without realizing and realizing the classless proletarians... In this context, we do not have a small challenge in favour of workers' rights...

The area of rights is very important. When it comes to thinking about the right to work, we should not only rely on past cadres. You need to fight the abuses of Uber, because instead of being a salaried job, it sells the issue to us as an autonomous trade -- but that's how we don't respond to all the current challenges. We must add a new look at the situation. It is heard that work should not only be a trade, but also a welfare provider. I believe that with these objectives we are in the perspective of neoliberalism, because we personalize and individualize the problem. We have to go further and define work as a place of relationship with others and with the world. In this way, the seriousness of the individualization of work in recent times is evident. Work is often a space for socialization, but also for solidarity. Work also influences self-esteem... but think about how the peoitzar influences...

We are becoming more and more individualistic. How can we make this claim in this context so as not to seem obsolete?

It's a good question, because it serves us to realize the danger of limiting theory. It is true that we are in an individualistic society, and that there is no turning back, because, knowing that this has its advantages, no one would want to return to the past as a possessor or as a family patrimony. Individualization rhymes with liberal freedom, intelligence, conscience and freedom prevail. That is an improvement, no doubt. But at the same time, I think that this atomized society is not good. Firstly, not having more common objectives, social unity and solidarity because it is a black land for violence. How do we ensure both – freedom and self-solidarity –? That is the current challenge. It may seem silly, but I think it goes through the redefinition of fraternity.

In the meantime, if not completely, we should at least disconnect a little, right?

Surely, but this discipline is very difficult because everything is done to avoid it: connection is a source of pleasure and pleasure. To the extent that all this is political, we need political victories, and for that we need political awareness, both individual and collective. In addition, we need an ethic, as a worker, the question “Do I fulfill this mandate or disobey?” should be there. This ethics should also be channeled as consumers of numerical. The improvements will come from the link between the two: not only can workers and consumers be required to change attitudes, and everything cannot be left to politics. The weather, in the background, as in the emergency.