Logistics labor: Insights from the sociologies of globalization, the economy, and work

Abstract

This article identifies the origins of the rise of the logistics industry to highlight the powerful structural position that this endows on the industry and its workers. I begin by analyzing an often-neglected aspect of globalization by describing the logistics, or goods movement industry, and identifying the role that the "logistics revolution" plays within the contemporary capitalist system. Then, synthesizing insights from global, economic, and labor sociology, I argue that the structural "brokerage" position of logistics workers in the global economy offers them key advantages on which labor and political movements might capitalize in struggles for economic justice and worker rights. I examine empirical research regarding labor organizing within logistics to determine if workers leverage this powerful position into concrete gains. Finally, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to how logistics workers recognize, articulate, and utilize their potentially powerful position in globalization flows.Future research should endeavor to understand how this can be achieved among wide groups of logistics workers to achieve the most success in labor and political movements.

Production Regimes and Class Compromise Among European Warehouse Workers

“…In this study, we have focused on the logistics sector, which holds increasing centrality in an era of global capitalism. Although this sector has attracted attention from scholars concerned with the distribution of power within global value chains (Bonacich & Wilson, 2008; Chua et al., 2018; Cowen, 2014; Sowers, 2017), the resulting research has often tended to homogenize the nature of production politics and their outcomes at the workplace level. For example, current studies in warehouses illustrate how management relies largely on coercive practices and policies, which in turn may emphasize the despotic nature of work at varying points in the logistics circuits, as Newsome et al.…”

“…In recent years, scholars have begun to recognize the importance of the “logistics revolution” for the global circulation of commodities and thus for the continuation of advanced capitalism as a whole (Bonacich & Wilson, 2008; Chua, 2014; Cowen, 2014; Lichtenstein, 2009; Sowers, 2017). One theme that has repeatedly surfaced in this literature concerns the furtive power that logistics workers possess (Neilson, 2012).…”

Logistical geographies

“…The profound constraints faced by many logistics workers, while occupationally and geographically varied as we have just seen, go some way to explaining a seeming paradox: why, given their apparently strategic role in the global circulation of commodities, are they are not able to disrupt the system on a more regular basis? In terms of the power resources vocabulary of labour geography/studies, the workplace bargaining power that accrues to workers by virtue of their position at strategic “choke points” (Alimahomed‐Wilson & Ness, 2018) in commodity flows is generally offset and negated by (a) weak associational power (low levels of collective organising) and (b) low levels of marketplace bargaining power (their position in the labour market is heavily segmented and mediated through staffing agencies) (Sowers, 2017). In the case of parcel delivery, for example, Haidinger and Flecker (2015) discuss how the multiple layers of subcontracting, routine use of technology for labour surveillance/control, dispersed workplace settings, and reluctance of unions to organise couriers serve to restrict labour agency.…”

Are Transport and Raw Materials Nodes in Global Commodity Chains Potential Places for Worker/Movement Organization?

“…Despite some evidence that longshoremen and their allies can utilize labor actions to exploit the crucial structural pivots of these global ports, the structure of the workforce in the broader port complexes presents challenges to labor organizers (Sowers ). It is important to note that the logistics workforce is highly variegated, includes a wide range of jobs in disparate locations, and is divided by race and nativity (Bonacich and Wilson ; Sowers, Ciccantell, and Smith ).…”