The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.The management of logistics has been revolutionised over the past 30 years and has been regarded as a key determinant of business competitiveness. Logistics includes a broad range of activities such as, handling, transport and storage and of goods and materials. Most companies provide some of these logistic functions in house, but other, to improve their performance (and reduce their cost) have chosen to outsource some functions, especially the activities of handling and transportations to logistic service providers (LSPs).
During the last years the fast expansion of the online shopping market in Europe influenced the growing of an army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. The increase of competition in the market of logistic and parcel delivering, relies on one side upon IT transformations directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery, and on the other side on the supply of flexible labor services at minimum cost, fuelling a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships (Newsome et al. 2016).
This contribution focus on the Italian division of an international courier delivery services company in the city of Rome, by examining its strategies on the organization of work and outsourcing of some of the activities. Outsourcing was historically and largely “domestic to other firms or organizations in the near vicinity of the outsourcing firm” and the Firm' strategy was to use a combination of “internal and external arrangements, shifting the balance between in-house and outsourced production”(Doellgast & Gosper, 2010).
“Firms restructure under pressure to improve performance, adopting strategies to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. The prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor”. It is important to examine the boundaries of inclusion and processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers to better understand the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain” (Gutelius, 2015).
This contributions concerns the analysis of a case study in the logistic sector and it is based on almost a year of participant observation on the internal dynamics that occurred inside the Italian division of an International Courier Delivery Services Company in the city of Rome, at workplace level. The covered period goes from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014.
In this case, the company decided to carry out the activities of parcel handling outside the boundaries of the firm, by commissioning the execution of these activities to a consortium. This consortium had in turn sub-contracted these jobs to other two cooperatives.
The main aim of the research was to examine the effect of the outsourcing of these activities on:
a) working conditions inside all the warehouses of the company located in Rome (very far from the city center);
b) the relationships between workers and trade unions, at a workplace level;
c) trade unions’ strategies to represent unionized workers and to improve their working and living conditions.
Two different unions were compared: a confederal union with a long tradition, whose unionized workers were mostly direct dependent by the Company; an extra-confederal, radical union, (that was born in 2011 and started to informally operate at workplace level only since 2013) whose unionized workers were mostly migrant and atypical workers of cooperatives.
The outcome of the outsourcing of parcel handling activities was the split of "the labor environment and its workers" into an “internal space”, managed by the Company with a direct control over the workforce, and an “external” one, indirectly managed through contracts to cooperatives. This process affected working conditions, and in particular differentiate migrant workers from Italians one. Infact while the company workers were mostly italians, direct dependents, and covered by national collective agreement, the cooperative workers were mostly migrants, atypical workers (as “dependent-partner of the cooperatives”) and employed in heavy and dirty works, with low wages and very few labor rights.
The process of outsourcing influenced also the strategies adopted by unions in order to defend and protect its members.
We observed how the two different unions has chosen to adopt different strategies, on the basis of the interaction between the followings internal factors:
1. characteristics and interests of unionized workers (also influenced by labour market occupational segregation by class, gender, race, age);
2. organization structure: complex and bureaucratic organization or a lean organization of workers and activists;
3. union source of power: if legitimated by the practice of social dialogue with the employer, or by the exchange with the State, or if legitimated by the unionized workers;
4. kind and amount of economic resources: deriving from public funds or only from its members;
5. logic of action: the logic of membership or the logic of influence;
6. logic of goal formation: in a short time or in a long time perspective;
7. logic of effective implementation: social dialogue and collective bargaining or various form of conflictual and collective actions.
The comparison between the confederal trade union and the extra-confederal and autonomous one, showed differences on strategies, that can be understood not only focusing on firm’ strategies but also on the relation between unions and workers, on union structure and resources, and on the way union conceive the interplay between labor and capital.