A choke point in the making? Labour conflict, trade unionism and production of scale in Amazon warehouses

Abstract

The goal of this article is to analyse the construction of scales in union activity. For this purpose, the case of Amazon is studied. This company has built a network of logistics centres and warehouses in Spain to organize the distribution of products following a system that combines economy of scale, the use of technologies and automation in the supply chain, the outsourcing of door-to-door delivery, and the use of inventory management and work organization methods based on the just-in-time model. The result of this model is a highly conflictive labour context in which union action has been developing at different scales. Based on interviews with 19 workers and trade unionists from different organizations and workplaces, and focusing on the structures of worker representation, collective bargaining and union action, the spatial agency of workers in their attempt to make a choke point in the logistics chain The articles concludes that choke points are no given spatial entities, derived exclusively from the technical organisation of the circulation of commodities, but they require, in addition, associative power that manifests through workers’ agency at multiple scales. In addition, the scales of action of trade unions are neither unique nor fixed, but are socially constructed, and, as such, multiple and changing based on the dialectical relationship between capital and labour.