If at the level of formal organisation trade unions remain unchallenged as the leading actors of the labour movement, today we see many other movement forms emerging from the bases and the margins of labour, often with far more active participation. The relationship between “old” and “new” labour movements varies hugely from country to country and industry to industry; here what we want to stress is that a simple identification of “the labour movement” with “trade unions” is both politically and intellectually unhelpful. Firstly, from the bases we find movements of workers, often in alliance with local communities or other social movements. They are to be found not only in advanced industrial and “postindustrial” economies, but also — more dramatically — at the capitalist periphery. Labour movements were important in the recent Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings (2010-2011). In the world’s second biggest economy, China, labour has been flexing its muscles in the most repressive of circumstances. Labour struggle has also begun to revive in the United States, and in the most dramatic fashion with the occupation of the legislature in Wisconsin (2011) and the strikes of Chicago teachers (2012). Secondly, we see those who are situated at the margins of labour markets and who experience continuous uncertainty. Increasingly addressed as the “precariat”, this includes both high- and low-skilled workers in the old metropoles of the global North as well as in the slums and fields of the global South. The precarious are often younger people, women and migrants, but increasingly those previously full-time workers whose rights and conditions are under attack due to the current economic crisis. The margins also include the un- and under-employed. Since the end of the long boom, orthodox economics accepts a higher rate of unemployment in the global North as “full” employment. Meanwhile, the reserve army of labour in the majority world also lays the basis for precarious and marginal work.

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Labour Movements,Globalization,Emancipation