UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Handling Globalization: Labor, Capital, and Class in the Globalized Warehouse and Distribution Center Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3c35641d Author Struna, Jason Young Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Handling Globalization: Labor, Capital, and Class in the Globalized Warehouse and Distribution Center A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Jason Young Struna June 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Katja Guenther, Co-Chairperson Dr. Ellen Reese, Co-Chairperson Dr. Christopher Chase-Dunn Dr. Raymond Russell Copyright by Jason Young Struna 2015 The Dissertation of Jason Young Struna is approved: Committee Co-Chairperson Committee Co-Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation bears my name as its sole author, but as with most other products of human labor and ingenuity, it truly is a collective work. Many friends, family members, teachers, advisors, coworkers, students, informants, collaborators, and coconspirators injected their energy into its construction. Long before the theories and methods were learned, or the subject matter was identified and analyzed, the influence, love, and support of my communities provided me the strength and tools to finally bring this work to fruition. Flaws and faults are surely found below: they fall squarely on my shoulders. But, where the insights do make sense, or advance our scholarly, political, and social causes, they spring from the long chain of relationships that fertilized their realization. Southern California was hard on Betsy Kindblade, Benjamin Struna, and me— especially in the early years of my Ph.D. program. Despite our knowledge that C. Wright Mills’ admonishment to understand the links between biography and history applied to us too, it was hard to not take economic and personal hardship personally. Betsy was more than a “good wife and partner” who endured relocating to a new state with a newborn and a crazy academic husband. She was (is) an adventurer who bore the brunt of moving to a foreign culture without an established social support network during the worst recession in a generation. Thanking her or showing appreciation in these acknowledgements seems woefully inadequate given her immeasurable and innumerable contributions to this process, and Ben’s and my wellbeing. If a Ph.D. degree could be jointly held, Betsy certainly earned that right. ! iv! My advisors and colleagues in the sociology department brightened our outlook. From nearly the beginning, Ellen Reese offered me readerships and research opportunities. Among the most important of those many appointments was the labor studies internship coordinator position that allowed me to forge contacts among labor organizers throughout the Inland Empire (including crucial links to Warehouse Workers United), and make long-lasting connections with students who would become informants, my own research assistants, and friends. It also helped feed my family and me. Equally encouraging and nourishing to my professional development and economic wellbeing, Katja Guenther pushed me to do better work, and to successfully apply to fellowships and grants I otherwise would have ignored. Both helped me celebrate publications as well as suffer rejections, and reminded me that growing as a junior scholar is often a fraught process. My co-chairs endured my foot-dragging, encouraged my activism, and otherwise made sure I would make it out of this process alive and with a job. Ellen and Katja, I am indebted. Christopher Chase-Dunn never ceased to surprise me with eerily relevant books and articles that would appear magically in my mailbox, unannounced, whenever research would seem at an impasse. He also incessantly reminded me that there is mostly nothing new under the sun in human behavior in general, or capitalist behavior in particular. Raymond “Rusty” Russell guided me back to conventions of the discipline more than once when I would be lured away from the empirics by well-meaning, but wishful-thinking Reds like myself. Everyone should be so lucky to have patient, attentive, and helpful committee members as I had. ! v! In addition to my direct mentors at UC Riverside, I am also thankful for William I. Robinson’s, and Jerry Harris’ watchful eyes over the years. My MA committee chair, and first graduate school mentor and friend, Akihiko Hirose taught me to tell readers what I am going to say, to say it, and to tell them what I said. Brian Fitzpatrick and Rick Posner at Jefferson County Open School, and Nick Morales at Metropolitan State College (now University) of Denver remain my first advisors, and role models as teachers. They were the first Freirean practitioners to show me what liberatory education was capable of producing. I am not just a better academic, but a better human being for their careful cultivation of my spirit. Fitz, your poetry still eggs me on. Dolph Grundman, Laura McCall, Robert Hazan, Rebecca Salinas and many other faculty and staff at Metro showed me that even working class kids like me can play in the academy. Timothy Gould taught me that it may not get better, but it will get different. Manuel Espinoza and Darren Jolly spent many hours provoking me, consoling me, and dragging me back to academia whether I liked it or not. This is your fault, and I love you for it. Speaking of brothers, Judd McGhee, and Karl Christopherson deserve special thanks for permitting me to act like an old man when we were teenagers, and for making sure I didn’t believe myself too much. The same goes for my Angelo’s family. To be sure, Strunas, Boxes, Carters, and Kindblades all deserve countless thanks for raising me right, and corrupting me properly. In the very least, my momma tried. Thomas Patterson, Catherine Gudis, David Fairris, Matthew Mahutga (then and now), and Adalberto Aguirre, Jr.—all contributed greatly to my understanding of warehouses, political economy, the labor process, or the human condition more generally. ! vi! Olivia Gonzales proved to be a great translator and interpreter of both Spanish interviews, and of what the industry showed us. Of equal importance to those above are my many informants and coworkers, named, unnamed, and pseudo-named who talked to me or showed me what work in the warehouse industry is. Santos Castaneda, Rocio Alejo, and their comrades Lupe, Ana, Carmen, Kenny, and many others gave me their time during Warehouse Workers United pickets, press conferences, meetings, Walmarch and other actions. Sheheryar Koosji, Mike Long, and Veronica Alvarado are among the sharpest analysts I ever encountered in any context: academia is lacking in your absence, but the labor movement is stronger for your strategy, tactics, and organizing prowess. Anna Wire, the sociology department staff graduate advisor is a saint. Despite the best efforts of the UC Riverside bureaucracy to undermine progress, or cause unnecessary tribulations from my admission to commencement, Anna kept things under control. Finally, John Gust, and Edwin Elias talked with me as much about my research as anyone, and the dissertation is better for it. Frequently, those talks happened on long, long rides to Berkeley, or on short, red-eye flights we took to organize, administer, negotiate, and fight for UAW Local 2865-The Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers Union for the University of California. Along with Mike Miller, who served in equal parts mentor, advisor, teacher, and friend, John and Edwin, among others, kept me sane in insane places (apologies to Rosenhan). When the university failed to keep its promises—especially in the depths of austerity—our union provided an essential corrective despite its own internal contradictions. Working with sisters and brothers in ! vii! UAW 2865 showed me the potential that trade unions still have to bolster the day-to-day struggles workers face in any industry at any occupational status level. While not sufficient for thoroughgoing social change, they remain necessary and indispensable when constructed and directed as mass organizations. Working toward the dissertation, my research was supported by a University of California Riverside Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, and a Dissertation Year Fellowship. In working with Ellen Reese, Juliann Allison, Tabassum “Ruhi” Khan, and Becca Spence Dobias on the Labor Organizing and Community Health Project, I received funds from the University of California Humanities Research Institute grant that supported my dissertation research. Further, data and funds from a related project funded by a grant from UC Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California contributed to this dissertation. In addition, the research was encouraged by a UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment mini-grant. ! viii! DEDICATION For my mothers and fathers. To my mom, who showed me how to work. To my dad who always said, “You know I like that work shit, boy!” when a job kept me from visiting as promised. You are missed. And, to my son Ben: May your work be vivifying! ! ix! ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Handling Globalization: Labor, Capital, and Class in the Globalized Warehouse and Distribution Center by Jason Young Struna Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Sociology University of California, Riverside,