Production Regimes and Class Compromise Among European Warehouse Workers

Abstract

The orderly functioning of global capitalism increasingly depends on the labor of logistics workers. But social scientists have yet to produce nuanced accounts of the labor process in the many ports, warehouses, and distribution centers that lie at the heart of logistics work. In this study, the authors seek to connect the nascent field of critical logistics studies to theories of the labor process in an effort to understand the production regimes that arise in warehouse work under different economic and regulatory conditions. Using qualitative data gathered at four European warehouses owned by the same third-party logistics firm, the authors identify several distinct types of production regimes at these warehouses and analyze the conditions accounting for each. Even in this globally oriented industry in which firms seek to standardize their international operations, locally rooted conditions play a significant role, generating sharply different forms of labor control even within the same firm.

Workplace regimes: a sociological defence and elaboration

“…Turning to the embeddedness of technology within inter-worker network relations. Dörflinger et al (2021) demonstrate that significant associational power provided by trade unions at a Belgian warehouse they studied resulted in greater use of legitimation relative to warehouses owned by the same firm and operating the same technical systems of lean logistics in the Netherlands and Germany. Additionally, inter-worker network relations can shape worker bargaining power by enhancing worker mobility power (Alberti, 2014;Smith, 2006;Smith and Pun, 2007) as information about job opportunities is diffused through social networks (Granovetter, 1974;2017).…”

“…This outcome is argued to be a result of the smelter technology requiring durable and stable network relations with other firms which insulated workers from competition. However, where firms lack strong durable ties with other firms in the supply chains or where those relations are asymmetrical and driven by a more powerful buyer firm, new technologies are more likely to give rise to coercive management practices as firms seek to rapidly respond to changes in customer demands (Anner, 2015;Bélanger and Edwards, 2007;Delbridge, 1998;Dörflinger et al, 2021;Mendonça and Adăscăliței 2020;Newsome et al, 2015;Pun et al 2020). As Dörflinger et al, (2021: 132) summarise 'where the… [firm] holds a weak position in relation to its customers, it must accept unfavourable terms, which it then passes on to workers.'…”

Contradictions in Care: Ward Nurses’ Experiences of Work and Management in the Swedish Public Sector

“…Importantly, the article shows that nurses are highly conscious of this shift in moral norms and sentiments that structure and influence the economic practices effectively regulating care work. However, we do note that the core contradictions of care work identified in this article are not unique to nurses: conflicts over time, power and resources are a constant in the world of work, from brick factories (Braverman 1998) and automobile industries (Glucksmann 2009) in the Taylorist era to call centers (Glucksmann 2004) and warehouse work (Dörflinger, Pulignano & Vallas 2020) in the gig-economy. As feminists debate the crisis of care, doubtlessly a powerful conceptualization of what many people -especially womenexperience as acute deficiencies and serious threats to their well-being, we must also connect the crisis in care to the inherent instability of capitalism and its innate conflict between labor and capital.…”

The platform effect: How Amazon changed work in logistics in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom

“…How exactly employment relationships are affected is not clear, as studies on this topic are still rather scarce, the exception being the work by Pulignano et al (2020), who analysed the adoption of new technologies in warehouses in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, for instance. Combining the perspectives on the digital transformation and national constraints, Doerflinger et al (2021) identified distinct production regimes with different employment conditions shaped by national institutions.…”