The Impact of Supply Chain Management on Labor Standards: The Transition to Incessant Work

摘要

Logistics—comprising transportation, distribution channels, and warehousing—connects manufacturing and retailing. It, along with the retail sector, has replaced manufacturing as the core of modern industry. What used to be the minor area of inventory management now dominates the industrial marketplace because of the emphasis in the modern economy on flexibility and speed across long distances. And this transition is fundamentally changing work processes and the terms of work. The emphasis is on market inces-sancy: the tendency for output and employment markets to be always active. The regimen enforced by the old manufacturing factories and the workers' resistances to the harshness of factory work life are now largely folk tales in the life of the working class. In their place is the world of FedEx, a world driven by logistics required by global outsourcing. The marketplace has created all new work patterns: scheduling that requires 24/7 availability and instant relocation, terms of employment that vary from unpaid overtime to part time without benefits, and sweatshop working conditions where often the staffing agency employer of record knows nothing of working conditions at the actual work site. This new world of work is now only emerging from the mists of the transformation of the industrial landscape over the past quarter century.