From: "dave graham" <davgraham-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Logistics Study
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:03:57 +0000


This is the main body of the message

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SUPPLYING THE GOODS

The jacket I put on this morning was made in Poland while my trainers were 
produced in China and my jeans came out of a factory somewhere in Mexico. 
Add a sweater from the Dominican Republic, a tee shirt manufactured in Egypt 
and a pair of underpants assembled in Costa Rica from USA components and I 
guess you could call me Globalisation Man.

I haven’t worked out where my socks come from. Probably from some sweatshop 
staffed by Kurdish refugees in London’s Stoke Newington district. The global 
sourcing of my attire is made possible by a highly developed logistical 
system which has been set up to meet the demands of global capitalism. 
Logistics is part of an overarching system called supply chain management 
(SCM). SCM is the attempt to link supply to demand, that is, to produce only 
what the customers are actually buying or have already paid for.

Just as the dispersal of factories around the globe has had a drastic effect 
on industrial workers in the developed countries so globalisation has had a 
negative impact on workers in the logistical industries. In Britain this can 
be seen in the use of a modern form of casual labour on the docks. It can 
also be seen in the swathe of railway privatisations that have taken place 
around the world. The increasing use of cheap labour on ships is another 
example of the relentless attack on logistical workers, workers whose 
importance for the cycle of accumulation grows by the day. It is a bitter 
irony that as the logistics industry grows in importance, the employment 
security of many of its workers is being destroyed.

The attacks on workers in the logistics industry have been carried out with 
the active support of the state. Legislative weapons have been brought to 
bear on the rigidities of working class organisation. Privatisation of state 
owned infrastructure is a global phenomenon which has made thousands of 
workers surplus to requirements while driving up the productivity of those 
still in work. In these situations the wage in both its monetary and social 
form comes under constant and concerted attack. In many countries access to 
health provision and housing are dependent on employment. In Argentina 
following the policies inspired by the WTO and World Bank, dock workers went 
from being civil servants with secure employment to employees of private 
companies who refused to recognise the dockers rights to compensation when 
one of the companies went bust. Health and safety is another area that comes 
under attack as the demand for the integration of the logistics worker into 
a seamless production system grows more strident. The production line is a 
global phenomenon now, it stretches along motorways, sails across the worlds 
oceans, wends its way over railway tracks and even flies through the air. 
And all the while the magic eye of capitalist technology is watching, trying 
to make sure that the circulation of commodities is carried out without 
interruption.

The application of technology to the world of logistics is gathering pace, 
in the past this industry has lagged behind the office and the factory, but 
that is not the case now. The integration of logistics into the productive 
process requires that information on the whereabouts of components and 
commodities is bang up to date. For just-in-time production systems this is 
an essential requirement. Technological change in the industry is not 
confined to IT alone, it takes in such things as the load carrying capacity 
of container ships, the types of cranes used in ports and the 
reconfiguration of railway rolling stock and bridges.

A change in one part of the logistics chain has an effect on other sections 
and the demands of multinational companies are often the driving force 
behind the changes. For example,

	‘As [shipping] terminals have become dedicated to containers and falling 
freight rates have demanded ever more economies of scale, container ships 
have become larger. . . .

	As the ships employed by the major consortia increased in size, so ports 
have found themselves on a constant investment round in order to keep 
infrastructure up to date. In order to maintain schedules for these large 
vessels it has been necessary to rationalise the number of ports. 
Consequently the role of feeder or relay services between the ‘mother’ ship 
and other off-line ports of call is significant. Today, a typical Europe - 
Far East service will offer perhaps no more than four European ports per 
rotation from a selection that is likely to include Bremerhaven or Hamburg, 
Rotterdam or Antwerp, one UK port, and a French port. The synchronised 
feeder services from Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia and the Baltic states, 
as well as the lower reaches of the Rhine, are now essential.’

Understanding the Freight Business ed Kevin Wilmott, informa publications

He who pays the piper calls the tune. In 1998 Volkswagen had a transport 
bill in excess of one billion pounds a year and control of this cost and the 
logistical operation it pays for are of paramount importance. To quote the 
man in charge of their transport arm, “We buy others’ transportation 
services, but it is all organised, controlled and purchased by us.” VW’s 
strategy allows it to closely follow the market and its cost developments. 
Their aim is to always be able to carry out an internal cost analysis of 
what they purchase. Gefco, which is owned by Peugeot and Citroen, goes one 
further than VW Transport by not only controlling the logistics process, but 
also owning transportation hardware, including 4000 rail wagons. Gefco are 
always trying to find ways of decreasing the cost of transport. One 
advantage of controlling the movement of such a vast amount of vehicles and 
components is that the company can negotiate/ enforce volume discounts with 
major ports.

Fiat and Ford take a different approach. Ford, for example, uses a handful 
of logistics companies while Fiat is outsourcing more and more of its 
logistics operations. Nissan France’s tie up with Tibbett and Britten is 
another example of logistics being outsourced.

Whichever logistical route the multi-nationals take it is certain that the 
logistical companies will be tied in to contracts that carry penalties for 
failures to deliver on time. And the pressures to reduce costs will be 
constant. The stakes are high; any stop to car production lines incurs a 
penalty of around £15,000 a minute. And as globalisation continues the 
supply chains are lengthening and becoming more complex.

In an advertisement for the shipping company P&O Nedlloyd it says the 
journey of one single container can involve literally a hundred people. 
These range from the guy who stuffed the container to the bookings crew and 
the IT people, from the logistics planners to the insurance brokers, from 
the dockers, through the haulage drivers to the warehouse workers, from the 
customs officer to the captain of one of the worlds largest merchant ships. 
The logistics industry employs millions of people, but many of them will not 
recognise their commonality, or the need to organise globally. Many, on the 
other hand, do. Dockers and seamen have a long history of international 
solidarity, but casualisation and convenience flagging are undermining this. 
The logistics worker is being reconfigured and stands to lose her/his 
historical identity. The worker that will emerge from the revolution taking 
place in the industry is as yet unclear, but there is, we feel, a need for a 
global workers inquiry that addresses the issues being thrown up by this 
process.

Is such an inquiry possible? We believe it is given the technology available 
to us. There are important gains to be had from such a project for many 
groups and individuals. The docks dispute in Liverpool highlighted the 
importance of international work and the intervening years have not 
diminished the lessons learned from that struggle. In fact, the continuing 
globalisation process reminds us every day that there is much work still to 
be done.

The logistics industry is like the chain on a bicycle, when it breaks the 
bike is fucked. It can be a super duper £2000 mountain bike or a twenty 
pound bone-shaker from a second hand shop, it still needs a chain that 
works. The logistics industry is the chain of capitalism. And it is a chain 
that we can have an effect upon, because the industry is ubiquitous. This 
project can involve academics, trade unionists and isolated activists around 
the world. It is a chance to develop theory based on an involvement with and 
a close observation of practice. Of course, we could, instead, spend many 
happy hours discussing the advantages of a hunter gatherer society.

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We recognise that not only do we not have all the answers but most of the 
questions as well. We welcome other contributions especially if they bring 
us concrete experiences of the processes we have described above, which we 
can all use to further our understanding.

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