Nowak, Jörg. 2021. “Towards an Integral Theory of Workers’ Power: Workers in Logistics and the 2018 Truckers Strike in Brazil.” Global Labour Column, 21 September.
Recently, there has been considerable debate about the potential power of workers in logistics and their access to choke points that can slow down or halt the flow of goods. An investigation of the 2018 truckers’ strike in Brazil is a good case to test this hypothesis since about 400 000 truckers erected 700 blockades for 11 days, according to numbers provided by Brazilian police. The economic damage is considered to have been enormous for the national economy, since not only did many shops and pharmacies run out of food and medical drugs, but also many animals used for food production had to be culled due to the lack of animal feed.
In spite of the apparent success in blocking the flow of goods, the Brazilian truckers only gained short-lived relief in the form of lower diesel prices. The measure ran out after six months, and minimum freight prices imposed by the government, a kind of minimum wage for truckers, were never implemented. In other words, the enormous amount of power of Brazilian truckers to block the flow of goods – their structural workplace power – did not translate into political power to ameliorate their conditions.
This raises the question about the necessary intermediate strategies needed in order to transform the power to block production or road traffic, and what exactly impeded the Brazilian truckers from succeeding in this transformation.
FULL TEXT: https://globallabourcolumn.org/2021/09/21/towards-an-integral-theory-of-workers-power-workers-in-logistics-and-the-2018-truckers-strike-in-brazil/
