More and more these days, we move from job to job, the constant in our lives not being a particular trade or location but the social fact of being a wage-worker. B uilt into the wage-bargain is constant conflict. W age-workers organise, in a way no other basic producing class ever has done. In 1869, two years after Marx published Capital, there were only 250,000 trade unionists in Britain, and hardly any in other countries. O fficial statistics show a recent decline in trade union numbers.
Part is artificial.
There are now 34 million trade unionists in Asia, not far short of the 41 million in Western Europe. S outh Korean workers organised a tremendous general strike in January 1997. Their Confederation of Trade Unions finally won legal recognition from the government in November 1999. Increasing numbers of strikes and underground trade unions are challenging China's Stalinist state. Ecuador, Bolivia, Nigeria and many other countries saw mass political strikes in 1994-7.