The Cost of Free Shipping
Wildcat: Workers’ Movements and Global Capitalism
Series Editors:
Immanuel Ness (City University of New York)
Malehoko Tshoaedi (University of Johannesburg)
Peter Cole (Western Illinois University)
Raquel Varela (Instituto de História Contemporânea (IHC) of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon New University)
Kate Alexander (University of Johannesburg)
Tim Pringle (SOAS, University of London)
Workers’ movements are a common and recurring feature in contemporary capitalism. The same militancy that inspired the mass labor movements of the twentieth century continues to define worker struggles that proliferate throughout the world today.
For more than a century, labor unions have mobilized to represent the political-economic interests of workers by uncovering the abuses of capitalism, establishing wage standards, improving oppressive working conditions, and bargaining with employers and the state. Since the 1970s, organized labor has declined in size and influence as the global power and influence of capital has expanded dramatically. The world over, existing unions are in a condition of fracture and turbulence in response to neoliberalism, financialization, and the reappearance of rapacious forms of imperialism. New and modernized unions are adapting to conditions and creating class-conscious workers’ movements rooted in militancy and solidarity. Ironically, while the power of organized labor contracts, working-class militancy and resistance persists and is growing in the Global South.
Wildcat publishes ambitious and innovative works on the history and political economy of workers’ movements and is a forum for debate on pivotal movements and labor struggles. The series applies a broad definition of the labor movement to include workers in and out of unions, and seeks works that examine proletarianization and class formation; mass production; gender, affective and reproductive labor; imperialism and workers; syndicalism and independent unions, and labor and Leftist social and political movements.
Also available:
Choke Points:
Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global
Supply Chain
Edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness
Dying for an iPhone
Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of China’s Workers
Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai
Just Work?
Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today
Edited by Aziz Choudry and Mondli
Hlatshwayo
Wobblies of the World:
A Global History of the IWW
Edited by Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer
Southern Insurgency:
The Coming of the Global Working Class
Immanuel Ness
Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle
Strategies, Tactics, Objectives
Edited by Robert Ovetz
The Spirit of Marikana:
The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa
Luke Sinwell with Siphiwe Mbatha
Solidarity
Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights
Steve Striffler
Working the Phones:
Control and Resistance in Call Centres
Jamie Woodcock
The Cost of Free Shipping
Amazon in the Global Economy
Edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson
and Ellen Reese
First published 2020 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
Copyright © Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese 2020
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4147 7 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4148 4 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0751 9 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0753 3 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0752 6 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Preface: Amazon and the Future of Work in the Global Economy
Introduction: Amazon Capitalism
Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Juliann Allison, and Ellen Reese
PART I AMAZON’S RISE IN GLOBAL POWER
1 Amazon: Context, Structure, and Vulnerability