Choke Points Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain [Hardcover]

The global economy seems indomitable. Goods travel all over the globe, supplying just-in-time retail stocks, keeping consumers satisfied and businesses profitable.
            But there are vulnerabilities, andChoke Pointsreveals them—and the ways that workers are finding ways to make use of the power that those choke points afford them. Exploring a number of case studies around the world, this book uncovers a little-known network of resistance by logistics workers worldwide who are determined to contest their exploitation by the forces of global capital. Through close accounts of wildcat strikes, roadblocks, and boycotts, from South China to Southern California, the contributors build a picture of a movement that flies under the radar, but carries the potential to force dramatic change.
 

Jake Alimahomed-Wilsonis associate professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach and the author ofSolidarity Forever?: Race, Gender, and Unionism in the Ports of Southern California.Immanuel Nessis professor of political science at the City University of New York and the author of several books, includingSouthern Insurgency, also published by Pluto.

“Beyond analyzing logistical choke points as abstract sites for capital to route around or locations in which workers acquire untimely power, the essays collected in this volume take us straight into these crucial nodes of labor struggle. Choke points in global supply chains are revealed as spaces of hazard and calculation, violence and negotiation, victory and loss, passion and organization.”