The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 3030 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREto feel redundant, as individuals and as workers. The locus of their identification,“hardworking workers” (employment was the most frequent reason for movingto Slovenia among the first generation immigrants), was vacated, while the substitutionof the Slovenian nation for the workers as the bearer of sovereignty onlyfurther marginalized them. For example, one interviewee reported the following:Only we [citizens of other republics] were erased. We came here to get a job. Weearned our bread honestly. Perhaps we are truly good or too good; we were readyto do any work, and this came back to us in the end. They tried to get rid of us insuch a degrading way. (Slavenka, 47) 13The following passage relates a similar feeling:I had to find my way around the new environment [during the late 1970s] all bymyself. So I found me a job as an assembly line worker and I worked, and I wasnot interested in anything else but work, just work. If I hadn’t worked I’d not havefound my way around. I wanted to be independent, autonomous, to have my ownjob, my income, to be able to earn a living. I worked from 6 in the morning to 6in the afternoon, my hands were calloused, I worked honestly to earn my wage.Nobody can blame me that I came to Slovenia at the expense of the Slovenes. Iworked hard for every bite I ate. (Ismeta, 49)4.1 Neo-liberalization and social movementsWorkers’ symbolic and real status was particularly affected by the introductionof neo-liberal market mechanisms. This change was marked by the closureof factories, lay-offs, irregular payment for work and, for the first time in manyyears, worker strikes (Stanojević 2008). At the same time, during this period ofcrisis in the Slovenian economy, which was rooted in the global reorganization oflabor (from Fordism to post-Fordism), the symbolic value of work also changed.The change came at the expense of industrial work and production, and in favorof intellectual work, particularly work performed by the educated elite. Unlike inthe former, industrial society, productivity and profit were increasing while employmentwas shrinking, leaving entire segments of the population redundant(Bauman 2001). During the socialist era, which coincided with Fordist productionmethods, every type of work was deemed valuable and important, and this wasboth professed 14 and reflected at the level of income. 15 Our interviewees describedthis changeover as a period marked by the loss of regular jobs, 16 the ex-13 The interview was conducted by Jasmina Pavčnik, a student of the Faculty for Social Work in 2007/08.14 One well known slogan from this period was, “Honor and power to labor.”15 Until 1962 the ratio between the personal income of unskilled workers and that of workers with higher educationwas 1 : 2.8; this ratio was later reduced reaching its lowest point in 1974. The greatest rise was seen in the personalincome of additionally trained, unskilled and skilled workers, and the smallest in the income of workers with highereducation. (Kresal 1998, 330)16 For more on how job loss affected four specific erased persons and how it was reflected in their physical and mentalhealth, see Lipovec Čebron 2007a.