Low-Wage Labor in Distribution Sectors of the Food Economy
Low-Wage Labor in Distribution Sectors of the Food Economy
- Jennifer ParkerJennifer ParkerPennsylvania State University
Summary
Low-wage distribution workers are essential to the food economy. In a globalizing world, the distance between sites of production and consumption expands as firms search the world for more diverse and profitable sources of food. Truckers, seafarers, and warehouse employees dedicate their working hours to the safe transport and storage of food, often in dangerous and treacherous conditions, yet they remain largely invisible to consumers. Many of these workers face precarious employment conditions—temporary, unstable, and insecure work with little or no employer-provided benefits—emblematic of jobs in the neoliberal labor market.
Capitalist features of the modern food chain, including advancements in technology, the growth of e-commerce, and the logistics revolution, tend to prioritize speed and efficiency over workers’ well-being. From a political economy perspective, the pursuit of profit is reflected in ever-intensifying efforts to extract value from labor, introducing flexible, neo-Taylorist, algorithmic forms of employee monitoring and adopting just-in-time management logics. These changes have accompanied a deterioration of workers’ rights and conditions, making it critical in the 21st century to spotlight the human cost alongside “progress” in building a sustainable global food system.
The neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility increasingly pervades managerial practices, often contributing to labor suppression and absolving employers, including Walmart, Whole Foods, and other giant food retailers, of any obligation for employee welfare downstream in their supply chains. The conditions of workers in the global food economy are complicated by demographic inequalities, with the most socioeconomically vulnerable groups experiencing the most precarious, dangerous, and demanding conditions. This highlights the need for an intersectional approach to understanding hierarchies of exploitation in the global food economy.
Key theoretical frameworks provide insights into broader implications for labor in the food economy. Racial capitalism explains how economic development inherently pursues racialized directions, perpetuating inequalities, and employing a predominantly black, brown, and immigrant workforce at the bottom rungs of distribution sectors. Segmented labor market theory helps explains dual hiring practices, divided between “hegemonic” and “despotic” workforces, and influenced by multitier ownership structures with the rise of subcontracted “perma-temps” in warehouses, lease-to-purchase contracts/debt peonage in trucking, and agency-based competitive bidding in the unregulated international maritime market.
Theories of masculinities explain gender dynamics within male-dominated sectors like trucking and seafaring where men struggle in bottom-level, precarious jobs in order to maintain their breadwinner status back home. The concept of gendered-racial capitalism has shown to be a formidable research framework for examining how distribution labor is organized, exploited, and shaped by gender, race, and class. The structural power of distribution workers at critical “choke points” in the global supply chain is an important area of interest in discussions around low-wage food workers’ rights to basic human dignity and the potential for improvement in their conditions. Finally, it is essential to question what progress truly means and for whom it benefits.
Subjects
- Food and the Humanities
- Food Politics and Policy
- Food Globalization and Industrialization
Introduction
A significant body of literature exists on the challenges faced by low-wage workers in food sectors of the economy. These workers include growers, transporters, supermarket cashiers, cooks, servers, and delivery personnel essential for putting food on the table. However, the role of labor tends to be obscured in the broader discourse on the food system.1 This article presents a synthesis of the literature on low-wage employment in food distribution sectors that involve transportation and storage of food products.
Understanding the issues related to low-wage workers in the food supply chain is crucial for several reasons. These workers are the backbone of the food industry. They ensure that food is available and accessible, yet they often remain invisible to consumers.2 Many low-wage food workers face precarious employment conditions. This exacerbates economic inequality and contributes to the cycle of poverty.3 Advancements in the modern food system that emphasize speed and efficiency tend to intensify pressures on workers, making it critical to evaluate the human cost alongside “progress” in the food supply chain.4 The increase in technology, the growth of e-commerce, and the enhancement of logistical systems have been accompanied by the deterioration of workers’ rights. Thus, to comprehend the challenges of low-wage food workers, we need to pay attention to these broader social and economic issues. Understanding the social relations of food production is crucial in addressing the issues that affect the quality and safety of our food. In this way, low-wage food workers’ rights to basic human dignity are respected and a more just and sustainable food system is created—for both workers and consumers. Additionally, low-wage food workers across nearly every sector of the food supply chain face higher occupational risks compared to those in other industries, underscoring the importance of understanding these risks in relation to the push for ever greater efficiencies.5
Researchers have investigated work processes and social relations of low-wage food labor through various methods and lenses. Much of the scholarship focuses on the contentious relationship between capital and labor in the hyperrationalization of the food chain, while other literature examines the lived experiences of workers on the job or the centrality of workers’ agency in making the food chain viable amid inherent uncertainties and disruptions.6 Some research offers a gendered and/or racial lens on labor in the food supply chain to illuminate disparities among different groups and the processes that underscore them.7 In surveying this scholarship, this article emphasizes key concerns related to the nature of work, exploitation, economic justice, and impact on public health and safety in the contemporary food landscape with a particular focus on food distribution.
Reflecting on my own intellectual journey, I began with Fast Food Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream, where through ethnography and interviews, I explored labor relations in fast food chains and was exposed to distribution processes essential to restaurant operations.8 While working in a fast-food restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, I observed how distribution work would casually overlap with restaurant work. Delivery trucks would pull up to the restaurant and certain co-workers, usually men working in the back of the house preparing the food, would be asked to drop what they were doing to meet the trucker to help unload the shipment. Most of it was frozen and had to be immediately secured in the restaurant’s walk-in freezer within the corporate-specified time frame. Tasks requiring heavy lifting, taking out the garbage, or those considered dangerous, like cleaning oil vats, tended to be both masculinized and hidden, yet were essential to the smooth operations of the fast-food industry. This reflected a broader pattern where the visible face of low-wage food work tended to be feminized, while the hidden, physically demanding tasks tended to be masculinized.
My subsequent work focused on franchise ownership and expansion, which opened my eyes to the informal processes that underscore the hyperrational logics of the multinational food brands.9 In interviews with US-based immigrant franchise owners of giant American food brands, I was struck by how intensively franchisees depended on informal ethnic economies to meet the standardized logics and ever-heightening demands of corporate headquarters. Franchisees often leveraged family networks such as having a retired parent keep the books or rallying a distant cousin out of bed in the middle of the night when a nightshift employee didn’t show up and the donuts needed to be made by early morning for distribution to other regional outlets. Additionally, in my interviews with CEOs and managers of multinational food chains in India, I learned how giant corporate food brands were building nationwide cold-chain infrastructure to adapt American fast food to the country’s food culture yet depended on India’s low-wage informal labor markets for implementation.
These observations made it apparent that as food systems become ever-more efficient, rational, standardized, and globalized, more (not less) attention needs to be paid to the essential and complex labor processes hidden from view and often subject to increased, new, or debilitating forms of exploitation. Thus, in this overview of the literature on low-wage labor in distribution sectors, this article aims to call attention to the contributions and challenges faced by distribution workers, broaden our understanding of labor in the food system, and advocate for the rights and dignity of the rarely seen workers who are essential to the food that ends up on the table.
Food Distribution
Food distribution involves moving and storing food products through a vast network, including producers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and transportation services (See Figure 1).10 This phase is crucial in the supply chain and is distinct from production, consumption, and service. It is constantly evolving with technological advancements and is critical to the “circulation process.”11 From the perspective of political economy, as the circulation of goods accelerates, so does the generation of surplus value, which capital appropriates as profit.12
Modern transportation and storage systems focus on minimizing circulation time, cutting labor costs, and boosting profits. This transformation is what Sociologists Bonacich and Wilson have coined “the logistics revolution.”13 In a global and diversifying food economy, the distance between sites of production and consumption expands as firms search the world for more profitable sources of food. “Logistics” refers to the processes that improve and control product flow, connecting the interdependent links of what scholars refer to as global value chains,14 commodity chains,15 or global production networks.16
Lean logistics focuses on weeding out inefficiencies, equipped with advanced IT infrastructure, credit expansion, developments in distribution technologies, and flexible labor processes. “Just-in-time” models focus on aligning product availability with retailer demand in terms of time, volume, and place. This alignment reduces supply-side inefficiencies inherent in traditional industrial models and shortens circulation time, particularly beneficial for distributing food, given the limited shelf life of processed items like milk and bread and fresh produce such as bananas and tomatoes that ripen quickly.17 Logistics workers are the people who move the goods—the truckers, the men and women who unload boxes in warehouses, the immigrants who man the cargo vessels across oceans. They are workers who have existed historically, only now they comprise integral nodes in the interconnected space of global capitalism, their most critical role being to keep the global flow of goods moving within top-down retail-driven systems that monitor these flows across the entire supply chain.18
Supermarkets have become “dominant firms” in the neoliberal food economy, acting as command centers in the “buyer driven” value chain. They control everything from design and production to distribution and retail display.19 This represents a shift from “push” to “pull” ordering systems, where the types and quantities of food in the market are determined at the retail end of the supply chain rather than by agricultural or plant output, as in the old industrial economy.20 Advanced software technologies enable real-time monitoring of sales patterns, global inventory tracking, and the ability to “pull” products to where they are needed.21 Supermarkets establish prices, create and respond to consumer demand, and control the extraction of value, treating each firm down the supply chain as a “profit center.”22 As these dominant firms compete, they seek to minimize distribution costs to keep offshoring profitable while avoiding liability for workers’ wages and job conditions in downstream firms.23
Scholars of labor relations show that the primary source of profit in the neoliberal order is the constant restructuring of labor processes.24 Logistics has led to job precarity because labor processes prioritize retail demands with less regard for the well-being of workers. Job precarity is characterized by temporary, unstable, insecure, and low-wage work with little or no employer-provided benefits.25 In distribution sectors, job precarity is often accompanied by explicit, neo-Taylorist forms of employee monitoring, such as equipping workers with personal electronic devices that surveil their movements in real time in alignment with just-in-time goals.
Food is transported via water, land, rail, and air, but this article focuses on labor in the maritime industry, trucking, and warehousing because these industries move and store the lion’s share of the global food supply.26 Ships handle the bulk of global food transport, with about 59 percent of “global food miles”—an industry measure of distance traveled multiplied by food volume (See Figure 2). Trucks account for about 31 percent of global food miles. They are essential for regional and local transportation, serving as the backbone of food distribution networks worldwide.27 Trains account for only 10 percent of global food miles, and only a tiny fraction (<0.2 percent) of our global food supply is transported by air.28
Trucking
Globally, millions of truck drivers are responsible for the transportation of food, working in what is considered one of the most hazardous and solitary forms of employment.29 In the United States alone, about 2.2 million people drive heavy and tractor-trailer trucks and another 1.7 million serve as delivery truck drivers or driver/sales works, transporting 83 percent of agricultural products and 92 percent of dairy, fruit, vegetables, and nuts.30 A growing literature examines the labor involved in trucking, recognizing its essential role in food distribution while addressing the challenges related to structural shifts within the industry.31
Benjamin Lore’s The Secret Life of Groceries depicts trucking as the “circulatory system through which GDP flows,” with food products getting loaded and unloaded dozens of times before reaching their destination.32 With the post–World War II highway system and consumer demand for affordable food and farmers’ aspirations for higher commodity prices, the government encouraged agribusinesses to adopt long-haul trucks operated by independent drivers, effectively privatizing food transport, but under tightly regulated conditions, such as limiting the number of trucking licenses available in the market and giving companies exemption status from antitrust regulation.33
Steve Viscelli, in Big Rig Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream, explains that institutional labor regulations during the New Deal economy spawned the “golden years” of American trucking. With institutional protections, carriers could organize price-setting, and collective bargaining empowered truckers. This gave rise to both a strong industry and the most powerful workers union in history—the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.34 Truck driving had become a middle-class, blue-collar union job, well compensated with family wages, job security, and an autonomous work culture.35
However, the 1980 Motor Carrier Act marked a shift to a minimally regulated, individualistic capitalist culture,36 influencing strategies later adopted by retail giants like Walmart.37 Union membership and earnings dropped precipitously. Mean truck driver earnings fell by 24 percent between 1977 and 1987, with median earnings declining by about 35 percent in various metropolitan regions since 1980.38 Pay and benefits per mile dropped by 44 percent among long-haul truckers, and the percentage of truckers who were unionized declined from nearly 57 percent in 1978 to 24 percent in 1990.39 In Sweatshops on Wheels, former truck driver and economist Michael Belzer wrote that long-haul truckers earned less and worked harder than at any time since the 1960s.40 In the early 2020s, long-haul truckers earned an annual median income of $53,320,41 40 percent less than in the late 1970s in real dollars.42
Scholars have investigated how industry changes have influenced labor conditions in the trucking sector. The literature identifies two primary paths to becoming a trucker: working as an employee or as an independent contractor. Employees are usually paid per mile, with rates and conditions that vary by employer. Variations include how miles are calculated; handling of stops, drops, picks, and wait times; and how time on the road is balanced with time at home. Employers may also vary in the benefit packages they offer and in how they handle payment of fuel, tolls, insurance, meals, and hotel stays during wait periods. Despite variations within the industry, the literature describes a norm of exploitation where truckers, especially long-haul drivers, are paid only for miles, rarely see their families, and receive little or no employer-provided benefits.43 For instance, truckers often sit through traffic jams and wait for delayed paperwork without pay, they then stay out on the road longer to make up for lost time.44 In this way, deregulation has shifted the responsibility for industry inefficiencies, such as traffic jams, onto employees.45 Employees are often attracted to independent contracting to escape these exploitative conditions.46
Independent contracting has grown significantly in the deregulated era.47 More than eight in ten truckers driving for the intermodal industry are independent contractors, paid by trip rather than by mile. While independent contracting offers benefits such as flexibility and independence, it has raised concerns among researchers about transferring financial risks to drivers and absolving large companies of responsibility for drivers’ well-being.48 Furthermore, federal antitrust laws prohibit independent contractors from collectively organizing to improve their conditions.49
Independent contracting comes in two forms. Truckers can be owner-operators, owning or financing their truck independently, or they can sign “lease-to-purchase” contracts, usually obligating them to a single company for a designated period. Owner-operators must invest in their own truck and assume all operating costs including registration, licensing, insurance, fuel, and maintenance. This status is unobtainable for most newcomers to the industry due to the large amount of financial capital required, necessary credit scores, and costly ongoing maintenance. In lease-to-purchase arrangements truckers typically assume operating costs, but they can get a truck without a financial downpayment. Thus, most truckers who get into independent contracting pursue a lease-to-purchase arrangement.50
Journalistic and scholarly research has identified widespread predatory recruitment practices associated with lease-to-own arrangements, including overpromising potential, indebting recruits with training costs, deceptively obtaining signatures on contracts, and setting recruits up for short- and long-term failure.51 Lore’s poignant account of a trucker enrolled in a lease-to-own program illustrates this concern. Despite hard work and following all the rules, the trucker was sometimes left with only one hundred dollars per week, dooming her to failure.52 Alongside an aging workforce, these changes in the industry have contributed to labor shortages and high turnover rates.53 One scholar estimates that turnover costs the industry several billion dollars annually, but the industry finds it more profitable to manage the problem rather than to fix it.54
Research has uncovered other exploitative practices, such as industry’s reliance on the newest drivers earning “training rates” and taking advantage of debt peonage to force drivers to continue working even when their costs exceed their earnings.55 This practice poses a public safety issue by encouraging the most inexperienced and least compensated drivers onto the highways.56
Significant attention has been paid to truck driving conditions in the post–New Deal era. In Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance, Karen Levy explores the impacts logistics have had on occupational conditions in the United States. One pervasive change is the federal requirement for most truckers to have electronic logging devices (ELDs) in their trucks. ELDs monitor truckers for adherence to regulations such as “hours of service” (HoS), which limit the number of hours truckers can be on the road. HoS regulations originated in the 1930s to address “trucker fatigue,” acknowledging it as a significant problem and a cause of accidents.57
Despite the focus on surveillance, accident rates have increased, and truck driving remains one of the most hazardous occupations, with high rates of job-related deaths.58 The use of ELDs have introduced new problems. By stripping drivers of autonomy, digital surveillance signals top-down distrust in truckers’ capabilities and denies them the dignity to make decisions about their own physical conditions, behaviors, and needs.59 Other studies have explored the clash between imposed “clock time” (described as a cold mechanical management strategy to reduce fatigue) and truckers’ “process time” (the natural bodily rhythm of human labor). Scholars raise concerns about the dehumanizing effects of rigidly controlled scheduling, resonating with broader critiques of modernity.60
A focus on surveillance to improve safety obscures other factors linked to crash rates, such as level of experience and rates of pay and compensation. Faulkiner and Belzer found that experienced drivers, hired at higher pay rates, had statistically significant lower crash probabilities than drivers straight out of training hired at lower pay rates.61 Another study reinforced these results, showing a significant negative correlation between truckers’ pay rates and number of crashes.62 Using data from 13,904 intrastate trucking companies in the United States and pay data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ju and Belzer found that higher pay rates for truckers were associated with fewer crashes.63
Studies show a troubling prevalence of chronic health conditions among long-haul truckers, largely attributed to the stress and work-life conflicts inherent in the profession.64 Apostolopoulos et al. characterize the profession as “active-living deserts,” with over 80 percent of long-haul truckers grappling with issues such as obesity, sleep deprivation, and limited access to healthy food options.65 Ethnographic insights illuminate the psychological toll of trucking with drivers reporting feelings of isolation, lack of support networks, and compromised mental health.66 Survey research supports these findings, noting that long-haul truckers report lower rates of preventative care measures.67
The health problems truckers face are a global concern, and studies conducted worldwide underscore the universality of health problems faced by truckers. Urwana Coiquaud’s research on Canadian truck drivers shows the pressures of the “for-hire trucking industry” where pervasive expectations for availability contribute to stress, musculoskeletal issues, and sleep deprivation, particularly among long-haul drivers.68 Similarly, research in South Africa links nighttime work to chronic pain, depression, and poor sleep quality among truck drivers.69 In India, where a fragmented “piece-meal” system is in place, truckers suffer from prolonged work hours, environmental hazards, exposures to pollution, and heightened susceptibility to a range of addictive behaviors and diseases, including overconsumption of tobacco and alcohol, hearing loss, and HIV/AIDS. Prolonged time away from home can lead to high-risk behaviors, such as unprotected sex with extramarital partners or commercial sex workers.70 Truckers are also more susceptible to noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and related conditions due to poor lifestyle behaviors endemic to trucking.71 Comparable risks have been documented among truck drivers in Zambia, underscoring the urgent need for global initiatives aimed at safeguarding the health and well-being of truckers worldwide.72
Research sheds light on the intersections of class, race, and gender within the trucking industry, highlighting disparities in working conditions and access to opportunities. Amie McLean’s exploration of Canada’s HoS regulations employs a “neoliberal individualization of responsibility” approach that undermines truckers’ well-being, depending on their social group, while obscuring industry hierarchies and intensifying “politics of blame.” These discussions point out policy responses, such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, that exploit migrant workers and erode local labor markets and the rights of domestic truckers. The resulting degradation of working conditions and wage suppression cheapens food prices but also masks the human costs of the contemporary food chain.73
Perspectives that account for racial disparities in the United States illuminate the historical dominance of white drivers within the trucking industry, alongside the pervasive racial exclusionary policies and practices that prevented African Americans and other minorities from getting trucking jobs, particularly during the industry’s formative golden years in the mid-20th century. Studies by Heywood and Peoples and Leone show how discriminatory hiring practices, union policies regarding seniority, and the monopolization of trucking routes created formidable barriers to the inclusion of blacks and other minorities.74 The deregulation of the 1970s, while diminishing labor protections for existing employees, paradoxically opened avenues for greater minority participation in the industry, particularly in the more lucrative “for-hire” sector. Despite this increased access, the representation of minorities among owner-operators declined following deregulation.75 Contemporary industry surveys indicate a significant demographic shift, with racial and ethnic minorities comprising over 40 percent of the US trucking industry. This includes 18 percent black, 4 percent Asian, and 23 percent Hispanic or Latino people, a change attributed in part to the aging out of white workers from the industry.76
Despite this demographic transformation, scholarly attention to the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities within the industry remains limited. Semi Queer, by Anne Balay, is an exception, as it explores the working lives of minority and queer truck drivers. Balay’s work sheds light on how long-haul trucking offers both safety and isolation for individuals confronting prejudice and violence elsewhere. Through oral histories, Balay reveals the harsh realities faced by truckers, including constant surveillance, exploitation, and their ongoing struggle for safety, dignity, and selfhood. These narratives underscore not only historical shifts within the industry but also the disparity between its labor practices and the resilience of its most vulnerable workers.77
Limited research has examined the emergence of women in trucking, a field traditionally regarded as “masculine” both globally and historically.78 Scott and Davis-Sramek provide the first known comprehensive and quantitative scholarly accounting of women’s participation in the US trucking sector, showing a notable increase in female representation in the 21st century. Despite this upswing, women still constitute a mere fraction—approximately 3 percent—of drivers.79 Through a theoretically driven empirical analysis, Scott and Davis-Sramek dissect both employer demand (structural factors and practices) and employee supply-side factors (personal choices) that hinder women’s integration into the industry. They also shed light on gender-based disparities in accessing desirable trucking roles, such as those offering proximity to home and improved work-life balance. Their perspective highlights that the trucking profession presents relatively better nonprofessional prospects compared to many traditionally feminine occupations, while emphasizing the need for industry-specific policies and initiatives that aim to facilitate women’s entry and advancement in the field.80
Qualitative investigations into women truck drivers globally have explored their distinct experiences. Lore’s research reveals horrific experiences of American women truckers, including fear, harassment, and rape by male truckers, and their strategies for staying save, such as avoiding getting out of their trucks at truck stops at night.81 Anne Balay recounts a similar scenario with queer truckers who remained in their trucks at truck stops out of fear of harassment.82 Salvagni’s ethnographic approach draws attention to gender identity and workplace dynamics in Brazil.83 Tabor adopted a phenomenological approach to investigate the perceptions and innate strengths of female commercial drivers in the United States.84 Naysmith et al.’s exploratory study identified women’s assets to the trucking industry in South Africa.85 Collectively, these studies enhance our understandings of the distinctive challenges faced by women truckers while highlighting their capabilities and underlining their need for recognition and support.
Seafarers
The maritime industry employs approximately 1.6 million individuals to transport 90 percent of international trade and eleven billion tons of commodities, including a significant portion of the global food supply.86 Nearly 60 percent of the global food trade is transported by sea.87 Seafarers, largely representing a form of cheap labor, play a critical role in ensuring the smooth transport of cargo and upholding stringent food safety standards.
The International Maritime Organization defines seafarers as any person employed (or otherwise involved) aboard a waterborne vessel.88 On the frontlines of the maritime industry, seafarers spend most of their working lives aboard ships far from home.89 They load and unload cargo, conduct maintenance on vessels and equipment, and handle ships—physically demanding tasks that involve heavy lifting, steering, docking, anchoring, and navigating through narrow channels, often during harsh weather while responding to emergencies at a moment’s notice.90 Seafarers are also responsible for monitoring and adjusting the climates of vessels and containers to avoid food spoilage and preserve freshness of perishable items.
Scholars, such as Rose George, have raised concerns about ever-heightening challenges shipping workers face in the neoliberal era. The proliferation of petroleum supertankers, containerization, and advanced refrigeration technologies have made sea transportation more profitable by accelerating the rate and scale of distribution. Refrigerated sea transportation is now a key method for delivering perishable goods such as meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, and dairy items.91 Reefer vessels (refrigeration of the entire ship) and container vessels (holds containers that are refrigerated) are the most common types of ships that transport food.92 Industry reports forecast continued growth in temperature-controlled cargo, reflecting increased demand for ready-to-eat packaged food in Europe and North America, and continued advancements in technology to increase “speed to market” from the Global South.93
While advancements in refrigeration technologies have improved the safety and quality of food supplies over long distances, these improvements have not translated to the safety of seafarers themselves. Despite the critical role seafarers play, they labor under vastly underregulated, often treacherous conditions, making maritime work one of the most hazardous occupations.94 Guillot-Wright notes that the fatality rate in this sector is six times higher than the average across all US occupations.95 Every year, workers lose their lives or suffer injuries at sea while shipping companies profit.96
Seafarers labor conditions are characterized by precariousness, as they tend to be employed on fixed contracts that are temporary, typically lasting around nine months and requiring renewal each time.97 Globalization has driven the outsourcing of maritime jobs to regions with lower wages and less restrictive occupational health requirements.98 The lack of industry regulation leaves workers with scant resources despite being essential sources of inexpensive labor.99 This vulnerability is particularly acute among seafarers from low-income countries, who commonly face exploitative contractual arrangements.
Outsourcing of labor supplies is a byproduct of the flags of convenience (FOC) system that arose after World War II as a strategy for employers from the wealthiest countries to avoid labor unions and regulatory environments that hampered profits.100 Under international law, ships must be registered with a single nation, which is then responsible for enforcing its labor standards. The FOC system allows shipowners to register under any nation’s flag, as long as that nation accepts them. This flexibility enables companies to shop around the world for countries with the least labor restrictions, recruiting workers at the lowest costs.101 As a result, nation-states lose control over taxation, competition, wage rates, and working conditions in the maritime market.102 The biggest shipping countries are those with some of the least regulations: Panama, Liberia, Malta, and the Bahamas. Moreover, FOC-registered shipowners can also hire workers from any nationality. Thus shipowners tend to employ mixed crews from different countries based on availability, skills, and costs,103 while offering disparate compensation systems.104
North America, Europe, and Japan were the traditional suppliers of seafarers in the early part of the 20th century.105 By the early 21st century, the five-largest sources of seafarers had shifted to the Philippines, Russia, Indonesia, China, and India.106 These countries compete for job contracts, leading to significant wage disparities, and what some scholars describe as “a race to the bottom” in terms of wages. By the 2020s, Filipino crew members earned around US$1,400 per month, while Indonesian and Chinese seafarers received even lower wages ranging from US$600 to US$800 per month. This wage gap contributed to an increase in Indonesian and Chinese workers relative to Filipinos in the global seafaring workforce.107 In stark contrast, the average pay for seafarers in the United States at this time was US$5,241 per month, though they constituted only a small fraction of the overall labor force in the industry.108 Workers from lower-income countries are typically bound by contracts facilitated through labor export programs in their home countries. For instance, Filipino seafarer contracts are linked to the Philippine labor export program, which directly connects them to foreign seafaring companies.109 Although this program yields significant remittances for the Philippine state, it leaves Filipino workers among the most vulnerable globally.110
A “seafarers’ bill of rights” was put into place in 2006 by the Maritime Labor Convention (MLC) under pressure by the International Labor Organization (ILO). It aimed to improve working conditions and establish international standards for safety, living conditions, healthcare, wages, and benefits.111 The Joint Maritime Commission of the ILO acts as the governing body representing both workers and shipowners, with the authority to set minimum wages.112 However, not all countries have ratified the MLC, including the United States, and those that have often do not enforce its provisions.113
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) also works to protect and improve seafarers conditions and takes an active role in contract negotiations. The ITF has successfully bridged unions and labor organizations from both high- and low-income countries to help negotiate seafarers’ contracts.114 In 2022, there were 11,862 ITF collective-bargaining agreements, most of them (10,953) on FOC ships. Employers are legally bound to these agreements, and the ITF has the authority to inspect ships and enforce compliance. According to the ITF, violations are common. In 2022, the ITF recovered US$28.2 million in unpaid seafarer wages after carrying out 8,763 inspections.115 While the efforts of protective labor entities like the MLC and ITF have had positive effects, research demonstrates that they have been insufficient.
The literature shows that seafarers continue to work under challenging and dire conditions that risk their health, well-being, and lives. Studies have identified numerous job-related risks for seafarers, including slips and falls, sinking ships, drownings, piracy attacks, electrical fires, exposure to toxic gas in enclosed spaces, explosions, sliding containers, and working near hazardous materials.116 Piracy attacks are a serious concern, as seafarers are often primary targets. At the 19th Asia Maritime & Fisheries Universities Forum at National Korea Maritime & Ocean University in Korea in 2022, Lan Tan and Toan Nguyen reported that more than two thousand seafarers were taken hostage in the five years between 2009 and 2014, while twenty-six were held hostage for more than three years. Tan and Nguyen reported concern that shipowners do little or nothing to negotiate their employees’ release.117 Adding to this cruelty is the common practice of automatically terminating contracts when a seafarer is no longer working, even if they are being held hostage, which has devastating ripple effects on families.118
Seafarer fatigue is a significant concern in the literature on maritime safety. Human error, largely influenced by fatigue, accounts for 80 percent of casualties aboard ships, underscoring the need for effective safety protocols.119 The demanding split-shift systems on board are a key contributor to fatigue, with 26 percent of shipping-related incidents attributed to it.120 Split-shift systems divide a seafarer’s schedule between “watch time” and sleep time, with prolonged periods of sustained attention and physical exertion disrupting sleep patterns and exacerbating fatigue.121 Studies show that split shifts negatively affect sleep quality, leading to impaired reaction speeds and increased errors.122 Watchkeeping, particularly at night, along with the ship noises and constant movement, further disrupts healthy sleep patterns.123
Seafarers also face pressure to continue working despite injuries, illness, and adverse weather, adding to fatigue.124 A case study of Indonesian tugboat crewmembers highlights that long working hours, twenty-four-hour shifts, and conflicts between work and family responsibilities are major contributors to high fatigue levels.125 Additionally, shorter port stays and increased ship sizes have heightened job-related stress and fatigue. The average time ships stayed in ports declined from over twenty-four hours in 1970 to less than twenty-four hours in 1998, with the percentage of ships that spent less than twenty-four hours in ports rose from 11 percent to over 70 percent.126 Spending less time in ports has led to increased stress and chronic fatigue, which in turn contributes to chronic diseases, such as metabolic and cardiovascular problems, autoimmune disorders, and higher vulnerability to infections like HIV.127
A systematic review of 1,317 articles (reduced to 202 eligible studies) on seafarers’ health found that fatigue is one of the most frequently investigated health problems in the 21st century, alongside stress, cardiovascular issues, and transmitted diseases.128 Another systematic review of 1,484 articles from 1994 to 2021 (reduced to 21 eligible studies) identified acute cardiac events as primary reasons for seafarers to seek medical care, leave the ship, repatriate, or die.129
Mental health concerns among seafarers are also well documented in the literature. A survey of shipping workers from India, Madagascar, Philippines, and Ukraine found high rates of depression, suicidal feelings, and low levels of job satisfaction. Feelings of depression were linked to loneliness, separation from home and family, job precarity, and long working hours. Workers also reported concerns about their weight, drinking, and exercise.130 A meta-analysis focused on Chinese seafarers revealed higher rates of depression and worse mental health symptoms than the general population.131 Psychological distress was found to be particularly severe among Chinese seafarers during the COVID-19 pandemic due to being trapped on ships for extended periods, experiencing boredom, separation from family, fear of getting infected, and increased suicide rates.132
Guillot-Wright notes that seafarers often struggle to access healthcare despite being documented workers with visas and passports, and having guaranteed healthcare through international agreements like the MLC and US-based protective policies such as the “Jones Act” and the “Maintenance and Cure” compensation scheme.133 The absence of onboard healthcare workers or telehealth services puts seafarers at significant risk when they require medical attention.134 Responsibility for maritime workers’ healthcare lies with the “flag states” where the vessels are registered. In states that have ratified the MLC, shipowners are responsible for the costs of healthcare or, in cases of death, providing compensation. However, due to what Guillot-Wright refers to as “overlapping jurisdictional mazes,” the shipping industry has found contractual loopholes to deny workers their healthcare rights.135 In the United States, which has not ratified the MLC, private settlements for injuries sustained on duty within US jurisdiction are often mandated to be settled out of US courts and in the countries of seafarers origin, where compensation is often inadequate.136 Although the United States has established protective policies (as in the Jones Act), research shows that these policies have been diluted in their implementation.137
The short-term precarious nature of seafarers contracts, necessitating renewal each year, compounds workers’ vulnerabilities when seeking healthcare or compensatation for injuries. The constant threat of contract termination discourages many from exercising their contractual rights to healthcare. Research on Filipino workers indicates that many hesitate to seek medical attention or pursue damages, fearing repercussions that could jeopardize their future employment prospects, with evidence of “blacklisting” in the industry.138 Despite these challenges, Filipino seafarers have managed to secure significant compensation for medical claims (US$26 million). This success, however, may lead to a shift toward hiring cheaper workers from other countries.139 The Philippine government has faced a delicate balancing act between protecting workers against exploitative conditions and maintaining competitiveness in the international labor market.140 Chinese seafarers encounter similar obstacles in pursuing compensation or therapeutic remedies following workplace accidents. Research shows that Chinese seafarers often face additional trauma while navigating the complex process of claiming entitlements through the Work-Related Injury Insurance System which was enacted under China’s planned economy in 2004.141
Further exacerbating these vulnerabilities is the lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). At least one study conducted in the United Kingdom found that seafarers sometimes lack proper PPE, suffer from blisters due to the poor quality of safety shoes, trip over too-long boiler suits, and develop dermatitis due to the absence of gloves. This prioritization of profits over safety by shipping companies is a significant concern in the literature.142
The literature points to the intersectionality of gender, race, and class in the maritime workforce. With 98 percent of merchant seafarers being men, predominately from low-socioeconomic countries like the Philippines and China, the dynamics of the industry are heavily influenced by masculine identities.143 Ship work is characterized as highly masculine, with seafarers negotiating their identities both on board and ashore within their communities.144
The formation of masculinity among seafarers is closely tied to their precarious employment status. Shipworkers strive to uphold their identities as breadwinners and protectors, which are deeply rooted in notions of hegemonic masculinity, but doing so requires them to submit to the rigid hierarchy on the ships.145 This dynamic leads to a transformation of hegemonic masculinity on board. For instance, Filipino seafarers exhibit traits such as obedience, meekness, and conformity in their jobs while maintaining their status as breadwinners and mobile cosmopolitan men in their communities.146 This adaptation reflets a “configuration of practice” specific to the social context of maritime labor.147 Filipino men are often characterized as nationalistic, family-oriented, and macho, illustrating the complex interplay between masculinity and cultural identity in the maritime context.148
Warehouses/Fulfillment Centers/Distribution Centers
The proliferation of warehouses, also known as “fulfillment” or “distribution” centers, represents an important development in the modern food supply chain and is one of the fastest-growing forms of employment. Research identifies warehouses as crucial to the global logistical system, often referred to as the “modern day factory”149 and indicative of “Amazon Capitalism.”150 In 2020, there were approximately 151,000 warehouses worldwide, with an expected increase of 30,000 by 2025. It is estimated that over one hundred million workers are involved in warehouse and transportation support work around the world.151 In North America alone, there are twenty-five thousand warehouses,152 employing nearly two million workers, a near 200 percent increase since 2010.153
The food and beverage warehousing sector constitutes a sizable portion of this growing industry, involving the storage of food goods until they are ready to be delivered to retail stores, restaurants, or other eateries. Walmart, for instance, controls one of the biggest distribution and transportation systems in the world and holds the largest single company share of the US grocery market (25 percent) with its “just-in-time” distribution model. Similarly, Sam’s Club, ships more than 60 percent of its products through its own distribution centers, including converted “dark stores.”154 The increasing consumer desire for diversity, freshness, and new products drives change in this industry. For instance, the rising demand for meal kits in individualized containers, such as those from Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, necessitates innovations like new forms of temperature-controlled cold storage.155
Driven by the “pull system,” the focus of warehouses has shifted from a just-in-case model involving stockpiling to a just-in-time, service-oriented system that can receive, sort, distribute, consolidate, and ship out products at high speed to reach their destinations quickly.156 The just-in-time model synchronizes supply and demand by reducing waste and minimizing inventory-holding costs while responding to changes in demand.157
The shift toward service-oriented warehouses has altered employment relations, moving away from industrial norms of the traditional warehouse such as collective bargaining, shop floor agency, consistent work shifts, stable employment, and family wages to a flexible employment system. The flexible system is characterized by individualized employment relations, erratic scheduling, contingent work status, and low unionization rates, which labor scholars refer to as the “low road approach.”158 It has led to a simultaneous decline in wages and an increase in labor productivity.159 The responsibilities of warehouse workers entail ensuring the accurate and timely movement of products. They select and prepare items for shipping, load and unload orders, take inventory, and so on. Most warehouse workers are “pickers,” responsible for finding, scanning, and then sending the items to a packer (via conveyor belt) who gets them ready for shipment.160 Employers commonly track employee productivity and movement using handheld devices that monitor the accuracy and pace of their work.161
Warehouse workers continue to face many of the same injustices as those in traditional factory settings but without the benefits those old settings provided, such as job security and stable scheduling. Modern warehouse workers endure productivity pressures, constant indignities, and workplace hazards.162 Research from MIT Sloan’s Institute for Work and Employment Research shows erratic scheduling and high rates of workplace injuries as major complaints. These undesirable conditions drive high turnover rates. However, some researchers note that this turnover has had the positive side effect of boosting wages, thereby providing higher paying opportunities for lower socioeconomic groups in certain regions.163
Occupational and journalistic studies of modern warehouses all over the world show environments that are labor intensive, repressive, and prone to injuries and poor health outcomes, such as low back pain, fatigue, and mental stress.164 Qualitative research has explored warehouse workers’ subjective experiences and normative outlooks in the attempt to understand worker compliance. Vallas and Kronberg, for instance, emphasize the need to address the “moral economy” within workplace culture.165 Drawing on Marxist theories and literature on job precarity, they find while punitive practices and digital technologies promote oppositional consciousness among workers, financial strain often weakens their ability to embrace such consciousness, leading many to appreciate the job rewards provided by companies like Amazon, despite the challenging conditions, particularly those in vulnerable positions. The study reveals two distinct views among Amazon workers: those who see involvement in labor struggle as a threat to their security, and those driven to challenge the company’s control. Education plays a role in shaping workers’ views, with less-educated and more socioeconomically vulnerable workers holding less oppositional attitudes, suggesting that Amazon’s workplace control might depend on employing a significant share of workers who are less educated, vulnerable and undergoing financial strain.166
Scholars have drawn attention to the fragmentation of warehousing into different ownership and management relationships that externalize costs, complicate and obscure labor’s status, and reinforce exploitative practices. Jaffe points out that multitier subcontracting is common in warehousing, most especially among retail giants like Walmart that have the most power to squeeze profits. A warehouse facility may be owned by a large retailer but operated by a third-party logistics firm, which, in turn, contracts labor from temp agencies. Worker conditions tend to be the worst in warehouses run by subcontracted logistics operations due to additional top-down pressure to squeeze profits from yet another layer in the hierarchy.167
In a warehouse in California’s Inland Empire, Bonacich and Wilson found that more than half of the ninety thousand employees were contracted through temp agencies.168 The number of “perma-temps”—workers employed long-term with temporary status began to grow in the 1970s, eventually becoming so widespread that by the 21st century, the use of third-party logistics companies (3PLs) had become ubiquitous among large corporations.169 Retailers, being twice removed from employee relations and recruitment, avoid accountability for workers’ conditions and welfare.170 In turn, competition between subcontractors drives down wages, leading to more cost-cutting strategies, like piecework systems where pay is determined by the amount of work completed—such as number of picked or packed items—rather than the amount of time on the clock.171
The expansion of warehouses has also been discussed in the context of the “rise of robots” and the impact of automation on labor.172 While some argue that automation leads to a “dystopian future” of job loss, others see a fully automated postcapitalist future that emancipates human beings from undesirable labor.173 Sociologist Lauren Kelly challenges these views. She focuses instead on the sociotechnical processes and the material foundations of workers’ changing conditions. In doing so, she joins an emergent political economy literature that seeks to uncover the “hidden labour of automation,”174 which involves shifts in job roles, changes in the nature of work, and adaptations by both employer and employees (See Figure 3).175
This literature downplays “neo-imperial” discourse surrounding the supposed future redundancy of human labor and economic policy initiatives like universal basic income. Instead, it emphasizes the material realities of workers’ changing conditions and stresses the need to repoliticize debates around the future of work and the importance of collective social struggle.176 The impact of AI and automation on workers may be exaggerated and used ideologically to diminish labor’s bargaining leverage, as demonstrated by a supermarket in Australia that retrenched experienced employees and union members under the guise of automation, as part of a de-unionization strategy.177 This problem is further exacerbated by the invisibility of the human labor required for technology to function, further obscuring the continual exploitation of workers behind the facade of technological progress.178
Lauren Kelly and other scholars describe how Amazon fulfillment centers continue to rely heavily on manual labor, often involving physically demanding tasks, like lifting and pushing heavy items, and excessive quotas that put workers’ safety at risk.179 This reliance persists despite advances in automated technologies. Instead of replacing human workers, automation is often used to enhance managerial control. For instance, as mentioned, employees are commonly required to wear devices that allow tracking and monitoring.180 This form of “algorithmic management” outsources aspects of management to algorithms, increasing managerial control over workers rather than replacing them, following principles of Taylorism and scientific management.181
Segmented labor market theory, developed by sociologist Michael Burawoy, provides another lens to analyze warehouse work. This theory describes labor regimes divided between “good” (hegemonic) and “bad” (despotic) job sectors. Barnes and Ali argue that 21st-century warehouses employ dual hiring practices that segment employees.182 At the top are hegemonic regimes, where employees are hired into permanent, well-paid positions with benefits. At the bottom are inferior despotic regimes, where workforces are subcontracted for low-wage, temporary, and erratically scheduled jobs without benefits, making them vulnerable to the external labor market.183
Research shows that segmentation limits workers’ collective agency and reinforces the exploitation of precarious employees.184 It also reflects sociodemographic divisions, with despotic warehouse work disproportionately filled by vulnerable social groups, including racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, women, and the least educated.185 In the United States, blacks, Latinx, and immigrants are overrepresented among temporary warehouse workers.186 In the United Kingdom, Eastern Europeans are disproportionately represented in warehouses,187 while warehouses in Norway employ mainly migrants from Sweden for temporary positions.188
Gender dynamics in the warehousing sector show significant disparities, with men dominating the workforce and women comprising about a quarter of it.189 A systematic review of over four thousand articles (narrowed down to 21 relevant studies) found evidence of inequalities based on gender and race/ethnicity, particularly regarding job type, work organization, job conditions, and health status. (Im)migrant and racial/ethnic minority women tend to occupy the lowest rungs of the hierarchy.190
Rooted in the theoretical frameworks of racial capitalism and sociological theories of masculinities, Alimahomed-Wilson illustrates how warehouse logistics are organized along lines of white hegemonic masculinity. Affluent, corporate elite, straight white men occupy managerial roles, while a predominantly working-class labor force of racial/ethnic minorities undertakes labor-intensive roles.191 Using Amazon as a case study, Alimahomed-Wilson shows that white male executives oversee a predominantly male, racially diverse, and increasingly female blue-collar workforce. This shows a stark division of labor where managerial positions are occupied by white men and the labor-intensive jobs are filled by racial/ethnic minorities and women.
According to Alimahomed-Wilson, the surveillance-driven productivity metrics and high-churn model employed by Amazon disproportionately impact men of color and working-class women of color in hazardous work environments with high turnover rates. Racialized exploitation extends across the global logistics supply chain, where racialized labor systems intersect with gender and class divisions. Low-income men of color from the Global South comprise a disproportionate portion of the logistics labor force in sectors such as shipping and trucking, reinforcing racial and gender segregation throughout the logistics-driven global economy. This reflects Cedric Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism, wherein capitalism’s development and expansion inherently pursue racial directions.192
Other research analyzes intralabor relations and the fluidity of workplace borders, sometimes referred to as “borderscapes” to understand how segmentation is maintained and reproduced. These studies challenge the inequalities of segmentation by reframing job precarity and despotic work as issues of injustice that harm everyone, lending more optimistic potential for unionization.193
Employing an intersectional feminist lens, Lindemann and Boyer demonstrate how Latina perma-temp warehouse workers experience oppression within a “matrix of domination,” where sexual harassment, gender segregation, and childcare challenges interact with their precarious status to reinforce their vulnerabilities. Working alongside higher rung hegemonic employees suppresses their grievances, thus maintaining institutional dominance.194 Similarly, Emmons et al. show how immigrant Latinas are disproportionately employed as temps in the lowest-paid jobs, a status reinforced by the oppressive logics of the segmented workplace.195
Scholars urge consideration of these dynamics within the framework of gendered-racial capitalism. By interrogating the centrality of gender and race in shaping the organization and exploitation processes of logistics labor, critical logistics studies can shed light on the systemic inequalities embedded within the global supply chain and inform interventions aimed at addressing these injustices.196 Additionally, labor scholars point to distribution workers’ potential structural power to affect change, given their significance at critical “choke points” in the global supply chain.197
Conclusion
Modern developments in the global food chain have made the flow of goods faster and more efficient. From a consumer perspective, these advancements seem positive, as they ensure the transport of perishable food products over thousands of miles, resulting in the accessibility of a diverse array of foods. However, the literature shows that these developments have not translated to improved job circumstances and quality of life for workers.
This article covers an extensive literature on seafarers, truckers, and warehouse workers, the logistics workers responsible for transporting and storing the majority of the global food supply. The overwhelming reality revealed is that as the flow of goods becomes more expedient, the jobs of essential workers in the supply chain become more challenging, hazardous, and less compensated. These jobs tend to be precarious, emblematic of labor market changes that have come with the rise of the neoliberal economy—contingent, unstable, low paying, and lacking employer-provided benefits. Workers report disproportionately high rates of health problems, injuries, diseases, stress, low quality of life, and poor work-life balance. They face significant dangers and hazards, from injuries, deaths, and hostage taking of seafarers, to truckers victimized by debt peonage and predatory contracting schemes, and perma-temp workers in warehouses hired by third parties with little or no benefits and minimal pathways for advancement. While there are likely examples of good employers and logistics workers with high job satisfaction, the existing literature suggests these cases are not the norm.
Unlike waiters, cashiers, deli clerks, and fast-food workers—people we see regularly—logistics workers are hidden from consumers, and so too are the conditions under which they work. This invisibility makes their plight easy to overlook, even among scholars in food studies. The literature shows that the ideology of individual responsibility increasingly pervades managerial practices, contributing to labor suppression and absolving employers, including major food retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods, of any obligation for employee welfare downstream in their supply chains.
Key theoretical frameworks provide insights into the broader implications for labor in the food economy. Racial capitalism explains how global capitalist development pursues racialized directions, perpetuating inequalities and employing a predominantly black, brown, and immigrant workforce in the lowest tiers of the supply chain. Segmented labor market theory explains dual hiring practices, divided between hegemonic and despotic workforces, with despotic regimes reflected in multitier ownership structures and the rise of subcontracted perma-temps in warehouses, lease-to-purchase contracts and debt peonage in trucking, and agency-based competitive bidding in the unregulated international maritime market.
Theories of masculinities explain gender dynamics within male-dominated sectors like trucking and seafaring, where men struggle in bottom-level, precarious jobs to maintain their breadwinner status. The concept of gendered-racial capitalism has proven to be a formidable research framework for examining how logistics labor is organized, exploited, and shaped by gender, race, and class. For instance, it explains how elite white hegemonic regimes in warehouses suppress Latina workers’ efforts to secure better wages and childcare.
The literature reviewed brings forward several questions that continue to shape ongoing scholarship, praxis, and policy. How can we further examine the relationship between advances in the global supply chain and the persistent exploitation of essential workers, particularly in the context of the growing dominance of giant corporate retailers? What new policies or frameworks can be implemented to better humanize and improve the working conditions of these essential workers? Additionally, how can we more effectively address the conditions of hidden workers as society strives to build a sustainable food system?
Benjamin Lore implores one to consider how consumers are implicated in the system, at least to some degree.198 Giant retailers respond to and create demand, fulfilling societal expectations for accessible, low-price food while enticing us with new products and advertisements. This dynamic allows retailers to emphasize speed and efficiency, filling supermarkets with fresh food from thousands of miles away. In this way, consumers in wealthy countries sustain themselves on the backs of these workers’ misery. For Lore, the solution must come from outside the food system.
Bonacich and Wilson ask us to address broader societal questions about what progress means and for whom it benefits.199 Alimahomed-Wilson directs our attention to worker agency, questioning how workers assert themselves in contingent-based work in the 21st century and whether these efforts should be formal or informal and where they should take place.200 He notes that logistics workers are strategically positioned in the supply chain, giving them structural power that has been tapped into only in limited cases. Such power may be inherently enhanced in the handling of perishable food items, where delays can leadto spoilage, making workers’ roles that much more critical.
Karen Levy and Vallas and Kronberg highlight the contradictions and issues surrounding surveillance technologies, which are typical in the neoliberal capitalist order.201 These surveillance solutions infringe on privacy rights and are often counterproductive. For truckers and Amazon workers, electronic-monitoring devices lead to feelings of invasion and resistance. Levy argues that adequate compensation for truckers would eliminate the need for such surveillance, as there is evidence that crashes correspond with wages. To address this, policies are needed that change focus from symptomatic solutions to fundamental changes in how society values and supports hidden labor. Moreover, supporting job conditions and dignity of truckers promotes public safety.
Lauren Kelly delves into the debates around technology and automation, arguing that scholars should look beyond the simple binaries about labor displacement and, instead, empirically focus on the hidden labor of automation—how labor is shaped and reshaped as technologies are introduced—while repoliticizing the future of work debates and advancing workers’ rights.202
In conclusion, this article shines a light on the vast literature that addresses low-wage work in key distribution sectors relevant to the global food economy and some of the urgent questions and concerns that arise from it.
Further Reading
- Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake, and Immanuel Ness, eds. Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain. London: Pluto Press, 2018.
- Altenried, Moritz. The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
- Balay, A. Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
- Bonacich, E., and J. B. Wilson. Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.
- Coplen, Amy K. “The Labor between Farm and Table: Cultivating an Urban Political Ecology of Agrifood for the 21st Century.” Geography Compass 12, no. 5 (2018): 1–12.
- De Lara, J. D. Inland Shift: Race, Space and Capital in Southern California. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018.
- Delfanti, Alessandro. “Machinic Dispossession and Augmented Despotism: Digital Work in an Amazon Warehouse.” New Media & Society 23, no. 1 (2019): 39–55.
- Dua, Jatin. “The Abandoned Seafarer: Networks of Care and Capture in the Global Shipping Economy.” History and Anthropology 30, no. 5 (2019): 497–502.
- Fajardo, K. B. Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
- Freidberg, Susanne. Fresh: A Perishable History. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2010.
- George, Rose. Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013.
- Howard, Philip H. Concentration and Power in the Food System. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
- Jones, Phil. Work without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism. London: Verso Books, 2021.
- Kelly, Lauren. “Re-Politicising the Future of Work: Automation Anxieties, Universal Basic Income, and the End of Techno-Optimism.” Journal of Sociology 59, no. 4 (2022): 828–843.
- Levy, Karen. Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023.
- Lore, Benjamin. “Preface.” In The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon and the Future of Work in the Global Economy. Edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese. London: Pluto Press, 2021.
- Lore, Benjamin. The Secret Life of Groceries. New York: Penguin Random House, 2021.
- Ravenelle, Alexandrea J., Ken Cai Kowalski, and Erica Janko. “The Side Hustle Safety Net: Precarious Workers and Gig Work during COVID-19.” Sociological Perspectives 64, no. 5 (2021): 898–919.
- Reese, E., ed. Amazon and the Future of Work in the Global Economy. London: Pluto Press, 2021.
- Rodriguez, R. M. Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
- Sampson, H. International Seafarers and Transnationalism in the Twenty-First Century. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2013.
- Vallas, Steven P., and Anne-Kathrin Kronberg. “Coercion, Consent, and Class Consciousness: How Workers Respond to Amazon’s Production Regime.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World 9 (2023): 1–16.
- Warren, Andrew, and Chris Gibson. “The Place-Based Work of Global Circulation: Maritime Workers, Collaboration, and Labor Agency at the Seaport.” Economic Geography 100, no. 1 (2024): 31–56.
- Wood, Alex J. Despotism on Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020.
Notes
1. Michael Carolan, The Sociology of Food and Agriculture (London: Routledge, 2021).
2. Carolan, Sociology of Food and Agriculture.
3. Benjamin Lore, The Secret Life of Groceries (New York: Penguin Random House, 2021).
4. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
5. Judd H. Michael and Serap Gorucu, “Severe Injuries from Product Movement in the U.S. Food Supply Chain,” Journal of Safety Research 85 (2023): 234–241.
6. E. Baglioni et al., eds., Labor Regimes and Global Production (New Castle upon Tyne, UK: Agenda Publishing, 2022); Andrew Warren and Chris Gibson, “The Place-Based Work of Global Circulation: Maritime Workers, Collaboration, and Labor Agency at the Seaport,” Economic Geography 100, no. 1 (2024): 31–56; and Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás, “Maritime Labour Regimes in the Neoliberal Era,” Development 66, nos. 1–2 (2023): 65–75.
7. Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, “Racialized Masculinities and Global Logistics Labor,” in Gendering Logistics: Feminist Approaches for the Analysis of Supply-Chain Capitalism, ed. Carlotta Benvegnu, Niccolo Cuppini, Mattia Frapporti, Evelina Gambino, Floriano Milesi, Irene Peano, and Maurilio Pirone (Bologna: University of Bologna, 2020), 28–42; A. Balay, Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); and Alex Scott and Beth Davis-Sramek, “Driving in a Man’s World: Examining Gender Disparity in the Trucking Industry,” International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management 53, no. 3 (2023): 330–353.
8. Jennifer Parker Talwar, Fast Food, Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002); and Jennifer Parker Talwar, Fast Food Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream (New York, London: Routledge, 2018).
9. Pawan Dhingra and Jennifer Parker, “Franchising Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Immigrant Business Owners and an Alternative Economic Model,” in Immigration and Work, ed. Jody Agius Vallejo (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2015), 231–252; and Jennifer Parker, “Ethnic Social Structures and Mainstream Capital: The Ethnic Anchoring of ‘American’ Franchise Growth,” Journal of Asian American Studies 16, no. 1 (2013): 25–56.
10. Philip H. Howard, Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
11. Fabian van Onzen, Service Workers in the Era of Monopoly Capital: A Marxist Analysis of Service and Retail Labour (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022).
12. van Onzen, Service Workers in the Era of Monopoly Capital; and Amy K. Coplen, “The Labor between Farm and Table: Cultivating an Urban Political Ecology of Agrifood for the 21st Century,” Geography Compass 12, no. 5 (2018): 1–12.
13. Cory Levins, “How the Food Industry Ships Across Countries and Continents,” Universal Cargo, March 10, 2020; and E. Bonacich and J. B. Wilson, Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
14. David Jaffee and David Bensman, “Draying and Picking: Precarious Work and Labor Action in the Logistics Sector,” Working USA 19, no. 1 (2016): 57–79; and Gary Gereffi, John Humphrey, and Timothy Sturgeon, “The Governance of Global Value Chains,” Review of International Political Economy 12, no. 1 (2005): 78–104.
15. Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994); and Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
16. Neil M. Coe, Peter Dicken, and Martin Hess, “Global Production Networks: Realizing the Potential,” Journal of Economic Geography 8, no. 3 (2008): 271–295; and Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
17. Kate Mulholland and Paul Stewart, “Workers in Food Distribution: Global Commodity Chains and Lean Logistics,” New Political Economy 19, no. 4 (2014): 534–558; Bonacich and Wilson, Getting the Goods; Levins, “How the Food Industry Ships”; and Transforce, “Transportation Methods for Food Distribution,” Transforce, April 4, 2022.
18. Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness, eds., Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain (London: Pluto Press, 2018).
19. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; and Bonacich and Wilson, Getting the Goods.
20. Bonacich and Wilson, Getting the Goods; and Mulholland and Stewart, “Workers in Food Distribution.”
21. Mulholland and Stewart, “Workers in Food Distribution”; and Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
22. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; and Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
23. Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
24. Mulholland and Stewart, “Workers in Food Distribution”; and Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking.”
25. Jaffee and Bensman, “Draying and Picking”; Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011); and Arne L. Kalleberg, Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s–2000s (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).
26. UN Trade & Development, Launch of the Review of Maritime Transport 2024 (Geneva: UN Trade & Development, 2024).
27. Hannah Ritchie, Very Little of Global Food Is Transported by Air: This Greatly Reduces the Climate Benefits of Eating Local (Oxford: Our World in Data, 2020); and Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
28. Ritchie, Very Little of Global Food.
29. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
30. CloudTrucks, “Trucking Industry Trends, Statistics & Outlook for 2024,” CloudTrucks, December 26, 2023.
31. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; Karen Levy, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023); and Steve Viscelli, The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).
32. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries, 85.
33. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
34. Viscelli, Big Rig.
35. Levy, Data Driven; Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; and Viscelli, Big Rig.
36. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; Michael H. Belzer, Sweatshop on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Levy, Data Driven.
37. Shane Hamilton, “Trucking Country: Food Politics and the Transformation of Rural Life in Postwar America,” Enterprise & Society 7, no. 4 (2006): 666–674; Belzer, Sweatshop on Wheels; Viscelli, Big Rig; Levy, Data Driven; and Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
38. Rachel Premack, “There’s a Stark Reason Why America’s 1.8 Million Long-Haul Truck Drivers Can’t Strike,” Business Insider, October 21, 2019.
39. Viscelli, Big Rig.
40. Belzer, Sweatshop on Wheels.
41. US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Occupational Outlook Handbook: Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, 2023).
42. Viscelli, Big Rig.
43. Viscelli, Big Rig; and Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
44. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries; and Viscelli, Big Rig.
45. Viscelli, Big Rig; and Belzer, Sweatshop on Wheels.
46. Lore, Secret Life of Groceries.
47. CloudTrucks, Why Drivers Are Making the Shift to Owner-Operator Trucking (CloudTrucks blog, 2024); and Intermodal Association of North America, Independent Contractors in the Intermodal Industry (Intermodal Association of North America, 2024).
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