Choke points in transport and logistics have been identified as devices of the power of workers in these sectors. The 11 day long strike of around 400,000 Brazilian truck drivers at more than 750 blockades in May 2018 exercised an effective blockade of the national economy but only led to meagre results. The article asks how this mismatch between the power to block the flow of goods and the lack of power to achieve significant improvements of the truckers' situation can be explained. It demonstrates that analyses with a focus on the power resources of workers fail to understand the larger dynamics at play. The article proposes a political economy of labour as an analytical device that incorporates global economic relations, the characteristics of social formations and political-ideological relations into its ambit. It claims that in order to understand the economic and political leverage of workers in transport and logistics, one has to look at capital as a broader social relation which includes long term development strategies and material constraints like energy systems and infrastructure.

Leverage (statistics)

Choke

10.1080/09692290.2021.1931940

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Citations (18)

Die politische Repräsentation von schwachen Interessen am Beispiel von MigrantInnen

VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften eBooks (2010)

Esther Mikuszies Jörg Nowak Sabine Ruß Helen Schwenken

10.1007/978-3-531-92267-6_6

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Citations (3)

Labour conflicts in the Global South: towards a new theory of resistance?

Routledge eBooks (2022)

Andreas Bieler Jörg Nowak

This article reflects on the insights generated by the contributions to the special issue on labour conflicts in the Global South. We emphasize first the need to go beyond Eurocentric industrial relations concepts forged in the historically specific circumstances of post-World War II industrialized countries. This also includes going beyond the fetishism of regarding trade unions as the privileged agents of workers' interests. As the various empirical contributions to this special issue demonstrate, labour struggles against capitalist exploitation in the Global South go beyond the workplace and generally also include organizations different from the traditional trade union form.

10.4324/9781003266891-11

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Citations (0)

The spatial patterns of mass strikes: A labour geography approach

Geoforum (2016)

Jörg Nowak

Regional geography

Critical mass (sociodynamics)

Political geography

10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.08.004

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Citations (9)

March for Justice: The Protest of India's Maruti Suzuki Auto Workers against Imprisonment and Dismissals

WorkingUSA (2014)

Jörg Nowak

In J anuary 2014, the workers of M aruti S uzuki who had been sacked in summer 2012 organized a fifteen‐day long march through the surrounding villages and into N ew D elhi. Half of the permanent staff and all contract workers had been arbitrarily fired after an uprising in the factory. The article reports about how the workers led the march and accounts for their perspectives on the struggle. Several intellectuals and trade union leaders, such as Y ogendra Y adav and A rundhati R oy, held speeches during the march, and striking public sector workers met and hosted the workers participating in the march.

Imprisonment

Factory (object-oriented programming)

10.1111/wusa.12140

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Citations (39)

Celebrating Ten Years of the Global Labour Journal

Global Labour Journal (2020)

María Lorena Cook Madhumita Dutta Alexander Gallas Jörg Nowak Ben Scully

10.15173/glj.v11i1.4225

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Review of: Simon Schaupp (2021) Technopolitik von unten. Algorithmische Arbeitssteuerung und kybernetische Proletarisierung [Technopolitics from Below. Algorithmic Coordination of Work and Cybernetic Proletarianisation]

Global Labour Journal (2022)

Jörg Nowak

10.15173/glj.v13i2.5150

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Citations (0)