In Getting the Goods, Edna Bonacich and Jake B. Wilson focus on
the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which
together receive 40 percent of the nearly $2 trillion worth of
goods imported annually to the United States to examine the impact
of the logistics revolution on workers in transportation and
distribution. Built around the invention of shipping containers and
communications technology, the logistics revolution has enabled
giant retailers like Walmart and Target to sell cheap consumer
products made using low-wage labor in developing countries. The
goods are shipped through an efficient, low-cost, intermodal
freight system, in which containers are moved from factories in
Asia to distribution centers across the United States without ever
being opened.
Bonacich and Wilson follow the flow of imports from Asian
factories, exploring the roles of importers, container shipping
companies, the ports, railroad and trucking companies, and
warehouses. At each stage, Getting the Goods raises important
questions about how the logistics revolution affects logistics
workers. Drawing extensively on interviews with workers and
managers at all levels of the supply chain, on industry reports,
and on economic data, Bonacich and Wilson find that, in general,
conditions have deteriorated for workers. But they also discover
that changes in the system of production and distribution provide
new strategic opportunities for labor to gain power. A much-needed
corrective to both uncritical celebrations of containerization and
the global economy and pessimistic predictions about the future of
the U.S. labor movement, Getting the Goods will become required
reading for scholars and students in sociology, political economy,
and labor studies."
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