Workers in Food Distribution: Global Commodity Chains and Lean Logistics

Abstract

This paper examines warehouse workers' experiences of the labour process and employment relations in an ambient food distribution depot governed by a labour management system described as lean logistics. Lean logistics is seen by the sector as an aid to, and necessary development of, the globalisation of the sector's supply chain (global commodity chain). The focus is on how the restructuring of work as a result of lean logistics and the consequent imposition of a supermarket Taylorist work culture led to the demise of an industrial workplace culture and a dramatic deterioration in pay and working conditions. The latter included an increase in the scope and intensity of management control of labour.

The injuries of platform logistics

“…As a key logistical site, the warehouse has been especially susceptible to the negative impact of lean logic. Warehousing had traditionally been located within the industrial sector, benefitting from collective bargaining over work conditions and pay, but this began to shift in the 1980s when, at the same time that the value-adding function of the warehouse as a profit centre was realised, it was recast as a part of the service economy under the power of retailers, bringing with it the lower pay and increased insecurity shared by shop workers, food servers and the like (Mulholland and Stewart, 2014: 537). Work conditions were further depleted by the sorts of performance and productivity indicators that could easily be applied to the highly routinised work that took place in warehouses (Moore and Piwek, 2017: 312).…”

“…The constant mobility of goods is sustained by hourly pick rates that are, in essence, decided by the consumer and enforced by the retailer, rather than by what is actually feasible or safe. As such, the work is not only relentless and monotonous, but physically deleterious, with constant lifting, bending and stretching, leading to weight loss, exhaustion and injury (Mulholland and Stewart, 2014: 552). The speed required of workers, the intensification of the temporality of loading and unloading, and the strict enforcement of unrealistic rates, leads to reckless working.…”

“…Wearable devices are used in warehouses not only to monitor worker activity, but also to allocate required work and to set the unsustainable pace that facilitates the perpetual motion of goods. Perhaps it is no surprise that the warehouse is widely seen as ‘an employer of last resort’ (Mulholland and Stewart, 2014: 536).…”

Global Value Chains, Organizations and Industrial Work

“…This is the quite typical of circumstances in the global south. One way in which we can link a critical understanding of workplace change within and across national boundaries in an uneven world is by integrating the radical global value chain analysis of a range of researchers such as Raworth and Kidder (2009), Taylor et al (2013), Mulholland and Stewart (2014) with a critical sociology of work and employment perspective. This will allow us to integrate a radical global value chain analysis and radical political economy providing a more realistic understanding of the unevenness of capital's social, economic and political power within contested global value chains.…”

Regulating wellbeing in the brave new quantified workplace

“…Employee tracking in Amazon warehouses has resulted in reports of heightened stress and physical burnout. Indeed, employee health and safety usually comes secondary to lean logistics and speed of work in depot work (Mulholland and Stewart, 2013). In offices, Sociometric Solutions are being used to capture employees' physical movements and interactions across desk spaces.…”