Low-Wage Labor in Distribution Sectors of the Food Economy
Authors: Parker Jennifer 
Published: October 2024

Low-wage distribution workers are essential to the food economy. In a globalizing world, the distance between sites of production and consumption expands as firms search the world for more diverse and profitable sources of food. Truckers, seafarers, and warehouse employees dedicate their working hours to the safe transport and storage of food, often in dangerous and treacherous conditions, yet they remain largely invisible to consumers. Many of these workers face precarious employment conditions—temporary, unstable, and insecure work with little or no employer-provided benefits—emblematic of jobs in the neoliberal labor market.

Capitalist features of the modern food chain, including advancements in technology, the growth of e-commerce, and the logistics revolution, tend to prioritize speed and efficiency over workers’ well-being. From a political economy perspective, the pursuit of profit is reflected in ever-intensifying efforts to extract value from labor, introducing flexible, neo-Taylorist, algorithmic forms of employee monitoring and adopting just-in-time management logics. These changes have accompanied a deterioration of workers’ rights and conditions, making it critical in the 21st century to spotlight the human cost alongside “progress” in building a sustainable global food system.

The neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility increasingly pervades managerial practices, often contributing to labor suppression and absolving employers, including Walmart, Whole Foods, and other giant food retailers, of any obligation for employee welfare downstream in their supply chains. The conditions of workers in the global food economy are complicated by demographic inequalities, with the most socioeconomically vulnerable groups experiencing the most precarious, dangerous, and demanding conditions. This highlights the need for an intersectional approach to understanding hierarchies of exploitation in the global food economy.

Key theoretical frameworks provide insights into broader implications for labor in the food economy. Racial capitalism explains how economic development inherently pursues racialized directions, perpetuating inequalities, and employing a predominantly black, brown, and immigrant workforce at the bottom rungs of distribution sectors. Segmented labor market theory helps explains dual hiring practices, divided between “hegemonic” and “despotic” workforces, and influenced by multitier ownership structures with the rise of subcontracted “perma-temps” in warehouses, lease-to-purchase contracts/debt peonage in trucking, and agency-based competitive bidding in the unregulated international maritime market.

Theories of masculinities explain gender dynamics within male-dominated sectors like trucking and seafaring where men struggle in bottom-level, precarious jobs in order to maintain their breadwinner status back home. The concept of gendered-racial capitalism has shown to be a formidable research framework for examining how distribution labor is organized, exploited, and shaped by gender, race, and class. The structural power of distribution workers at critical “choke points” in the global supply chain is an important area of interest in discussions around low-wage food workers’ rights to basic human dignity and the potential for improvement in their conditions. Finally, it is essential to question what progress truly means and for whom it benefits.