About
Research team: Benjamin Fong, Jonathan Rosenblum
The largest private-sector employers in the United States are currently Walmart, Amazon, Target, Home Depot, and Kroger, in that order. All have built out sophisticated logistical operations that constitute key components of the circulatory system of the American economy. The Center for Work & Democracy's "Labor and Logistics" project is devoted to understanding those operations, with a keen eye toward what historian John Womack calls industrial "seams"-- locations and relations of vulnerability that can be seized and pressured in such a way as to gain real leverage.
The Labor & Logistics project is headed by the Center's Associate Director, Benjamin Y. Fong. He runs a Substack newsletter called "On the Seams," where much of the research undertaken by the Labor & Logistics project has a home. Fong also has a monthly column with the political economy newsletter, "Phenomenal World," devoted to the same topic.
In conjunction with researchers from the Center for Working-Class Politics, the Center for Work and Democracy is also interviewing warehouse workers in the logistics sector with the aim of understanding their work, family background, leisure time, and political beliefs. In gathering together a comprehensive understanding of their lives with in-depth interviews, the hope is to portray logistics workers' frustrations, concerns, and aspirations in a holistic manner.
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Relevant works
Fong, B.Y. (2025). A Sober Look Amazon's Automation Drive. Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2025/12/amazon-robots-automation-workforce-ai.
Fong, B.Y. (2025). The Big Ten. Phenomenal World. https://www.phenomenalworld.org.analysis/the-big-ten-defining-a-logistics-cluster/.
Fong, B.Y. (2025). Amazon says it's a 'myth' that robots kill jobs. Here's the reality. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/08/amazon-jobs-robotics.