Amazon’s distribution space: constructing a ‘labour fix’ through digital Taylorism and corporate Keynesianism

Henaway Mostafa ()
Additional contact information
Henaway Mostafa: Concordia University Geography, Planning and Environment 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., 12th Floor Montreal Canada

ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, 2023, vol. 67, issue 4, 202-216

Abstract: Amazon is one of the largest e-commerce corporations in the world and has built a reputation for fast, low-cost service. To rapidly and efficiently move goods from production to consumption, however, Amazon relies on a logistics network that entails significant investments in infrastructure (physical and human) and these investments present a challenge for capital accumulation. In this paper, I examine the labour practices that Amazon employs within its distribution work spaces to address this challenge. The analysis is based on a case study of Amazon’s distribution facilities (fulfilment centres and delivery stations) in Montreal, Quebec. It draws on ethnographic research as a community organizer and semi-structured interviews with workers (present and former), trade union representatives and public policy experts to identify Amazon’s key strategies. Building on past studies on the platform economy, I illustrate how Amazon relies on ‘digital Taylorism’ (Staab & Nachtwey, 2016), involving the use of digital technologies to structure and control the labour process and surveil workers, as a key strategy. However, I further illustrate how Amazon seeks to balance the harmful effects of digital Taylorism with what I term ‘corporate keynesianism’ (i.e., social welfare benefits) to attain a ‘labour fix’, i.e., the steady supply of precarious, compliant labour needed to sustain the logistics machine.

Keywords: logistics; Amazon; digital Taylorism; Montreal; e-commerce; labour process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2022-0017 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:zfwige:v:67:y:2023:i:4:p:202-216:n:3

DOI: 10.1515/zfw-2022-0017

Access Statistics for this article

ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography is currently edited by Harald Bathelt and Sebastian Henn

More articles in ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().