GLOBALISATION AND THE NEO-LIBERAL OFFENSIVE/15Since the beginning of the crisis in the 19 70s, the world has
experienced a series of major changes that have progressively
eroded living conditions for a majority of the planet's inhabitants.
Mass unemployment has settled in for the long haul, the unequal
distribution of wealth has intensified and working-class wages have
fallen sharply.
MASS UNEMPLOYMENT
The Industrialised Capitalist Countries
Looking only at those countries that already belonged to the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD; see
glossary) in 1993, in 1996 there were officially 3 7 million
unemployed. This is three times the figure in the early 1970s, in a
population with a near-zero growth rate. The average unemploy
ment rate in these countries has more than doubled, from 3.2 per
cent in 1960-73 to 7.3 per cent in 1980-94.
The number of unemployed in these countries rose by 10 million
between 1990 and 1994. In fact, the 3 7 million figure actually
underestimates the true situation because it does not account for a
number of different categories of the unemployed. The number of
unemployed in 1998 in OECD countries (taking into account only
those countries that belonged to the OECD in 1993) is actually
somewhere between 60 and 70 million.
The deregulation of the labour market is merely a mechanism for
shifting from 'declared' to 'disguised' forms of unemployment
through the creation of poorly paid and unproductive jobs. In 198 7,
according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD; see glossary), more than 6 million people
working in the service sector in the USA and more than 700,000 in
the United Kingdom belonged to this 'disguised' category of unem
ployment. While US and Japanese officials boast about their
successful fight against unemployment, the facts tell a different story.
UNCTAD estimates that in 1987 - the most recent year for which
reliable figures for comparison are available - the real unemploy
ment rate was 11.5 per cent in the US, more than 13.3 per cent in
Japan and more than 13.2 per cent in the UK (UNCTAD ,1995).
According to the 19 March 1993 Wall Street Journal, the economic
restructuring currently underway 'could lead to the elimination of