Jacobin Radio Confronting Capitalism: This Century’s Biggest Labor Battle
Apr 1, 2026
Benjamin Fong, Associate Director at ASU’s Center for Work and Democracy and labor/logistics researcher. He explores why Amazon’s scale makes it a central target, how logistics dominance reshapes organizing, the roles of automation, AI surveillance, and delivery nodes, and why new networked strategies are needed to rebuild union power.
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Work Design Kills Conversation
- Automation and layout at fulfillment centers fragment social interaction, locking pickers and packers into isolated workflows that undermine spontaneous organizing.
- Fong reports workers are often 20 feet apart, wearing headphones, with almost no coworker contact during shifts.
Van Cameras Convert Drivers Into Competitors
- Surveillance tech like Netrodine turns delivery vans into monitoring platforms that rank drivers and intensify competition among them.
- Fong explains cameras track stop times, breaks, even eye-off-road events and produce efficiency rankings used to discipline drivers.
Reinternalization Creates Big Targets
- Amazon re-internalized logistics work, reversing fissuring and creating larger, direct-employer sites that are legally easier to organize under U.S. labor law.
- Fong notes most Amazon warehouses employ thousands directly instead of contractors or temp chains.
