Transoceanic shipping is, in large part, responsible for these widening inequalities: since shipping operates beyond the…
“Transoceanic shipping is, in large part, responsible for these widening inequalities: since shipping operates beyond the territorial spaces governed by labor regulations, it allows corporations to do away with the hard-fought democratic and labor rights struggled for and earned within local labor contexts. The internationalization of the supply chain, in other words, is aided by increasing innovations in the speed and efficiency of the shipping market. As a result, circulation has been folded into the production process, becoming a field of experimentation for value-generation in its own right. Of course, there are highly uneven aspects to this story of logistics. Even as members of the International Longshore and Workers Union negotiate their contract under embattled circumstances on the west coast of North America, indentured truck drivers struggle against overwhelming legal barriers to unionization in Oakland and LA, port workers in mushrooming Chinese ports can scarcely dream of ILWU wages or safeguards, and factory workers around the world toil under the poverty line. The world of logistics looks very different indeed from the perspective of Taiwan, California, or the Ocean.”