[...] The NLRB excluded temp workers from its scope with its 2004 Oakwood decision, ruling that in the context of a union campaign, the eligibility for organizing of temp workers was up to the manager of the workplace. This effectively kept union organizers out of the warehouse sector, because any employer could quickly bring in more temps to displace direct employees in the case of a campaign or strike.

The lesson of the last eight years (and the last 80), is that it really doesn't matter who is in the White House or Congress. Only focused, sustained organizing with local investment blended with a national or global strategy can affect capital at the level necessary to make real change. Perhaps that is beyond the capacity of the labor movement as currently situated. Only such organizing efforts - and many of them, not just one or two - will result in a movement ready to organize "on scale."

[...] in recent years many employers -- mostly the big multionational delivery companies able to make large investments -- started to increase their use of technology and, alongside this, changed their attitude toward grassroots unionism. Then, rather than putting in place anti-union policies and taking on the risk of a labor conflict (and thus of serious economic losses), they are changing their strategy in order to increase productivity and regain control over labor through co-optation or cooperation with the union.

[...] As the complex inter-firm networks and contracting chains that were used in the past to reduce costs become less profitable because labor costs have increased, many big companies are reconsidering the possibility of internalizing labor in order to retake control over the whole labor process.

While this chapter focuses on the maritime logistics chain and particularly longshore worker power on the docks, its lessons are universal to the discourse on the exercise of working-class power. There are strategic workers and strategic loci in the supply chain and the production process. Such workers and loci are not fixed for all time, but are conditioned by technology, worker political organization, and alliances. Therefore no working-class strategy can be static or frozen in time irrespective of the shifting terrain.

The railroads in the United States carry 40 percent of gross national product (GNP), and remain a vital transportation system. [...] railroad labor has been handcuffed by a rigid Railway Labor Act (RLA) passed in 1926 to prevent strikes in the industry. But it is not only the legal handcuffs that shackle rail labor. The fact that there are 13 craft unions for 132,000 rail workers, all bargaining under separate agreements with the railroads, hampers any solidarity. [...]

Here again we have an example of strategic workers at strategic nodes who have vast potential power to impact capitalism, but remain shackled by legal regimes and fractured internal organization. Eric Olin Wright has written a brilliant essay that establishes a framework in which to think about this dynamic. He distinguishes between "structural" power and "associational" power. Structural power is the power of strategic workers in strategic places in the capitalist system. They have power per se, but the question of whether they can successfully leverage and exercise it depends on their associational power: that is, their organization, consciousness, allies, and so on. This interplay is a dynamic way for workers and their allies to think about their work in organizing at strategic choke points.

[...] breaking out of treating the workers as isolated individuals clinging to elite status on the waterfront, and instead making common cause with workers along the logistics supply chain. Often the workers doing key functions along the supply chain away from the docks are first-generation immigrant workers toiling at minimum wage with no benefits and no job rights. This employment apartheid cannot be allowed to stand, and these workers must become part of the community of the organized. [...]

Even on dock the possibilities exist to build power if the union can capture the new-technology work that is part of the use of robotics and other automated processes. Union members can be retrained to repair the robots and develop the software that programs and runs the robots. Right now the ILWU is not prepared to capture the new jobs in maintenance, programming, electronics, and data management that have arisen because of the implementation of new technologies on dock and near dock. The union needs to invest in its own massive training program partnering with vocational high schools, two-year junior colleges, and degree-granting universities, to prepare its members to be the workforce of the future. [...]