Do choke points provide workers in logistics with power? A critique of the power resources approach in light of the 2018 truckers’ strike in Brazil

Abstract

Choke points in transport and logistics have been identified as devices of the power of workers in these sectors. The 11 day long strike of around 400,000 Brazilian truck drivers at more than 750 blockades in May 2018 exercised an effective blockade of the national economy but only led to meagre results. The article asks how this mismatch between the power to block the flow of goods and the lack of power to achieve significant improvements of the truckers’ situation can be explained. It demonstrates that analyses with a focus on the power resources of workers fail to understand the larger dynamics at play. The article proposes a political economy of labour as an analytical device that incorporates global economic relations, the characteristics of social formations and political-ideological relations into its ambit. It claims that in order to understand the economic and political leverage of workers in transport and logistics, one has to look at capital as a broader social relation which includes long term development strategies and material constraints like energy systems and infrastructure.

Keywords:

• Transport
• logistics
• Brazil
• infrastructure
• truckers
• Petrobras

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Andreas Bieler, Alexander Gallas and three anonymous reviewers for comments that helped to improve this text. Special thanks go to the participants of a workshop at the BICAS Critical Agrarian Studies Conference in Brasilia in November 2018 with whom I discussed an early draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The lack of a proper theoretical basis for the PRA has been debated elsewhere (Gallas, 2018; Nowak, 2018; Runciman, 2019).

2 Infrastructural power can for example relate to the capacity of a specific state to regulate labour relations (Maneiro & Bautès, 2017), or to the capacity of a specific state to develop energy and transport infrastructure (Costa Cavalcante et al., 2017). Maneiro/Bautés underline that states in developing countries often lack the infrastructural power to regulate informal labour, and Costa Cavalcante et al. argue that the lack of investment into Brazilian infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s had a profound effect on the infrastructural capacity of the Brazilian state. Thus, infrastructural power does not primarily deal with “the statés willingness to enforce the law” (Fox-Hodess, 2019, p. 34), but with its actual capacity to do so. Nonetheless, the specific capacities of a state are to a considerable extent determined by the willingness of earlier governments to create those capacities, which is often a long-term challenge.

3 These data are based on an evaluation of the archive of the Brazilian business newspaper Valor Econômico by the author of this article.

4 A survey conducted by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2012 identified a total logistics cost of 25 per cent of FOB cost for soy, of which 80 percent are due to land transport (IBRD, 2012, 164).

5 The number of 600.000 autonomous truckers who are allegedly members of ABCAM, published on the website of ABCAM under the link http://www.abcam.org.br/index.php/pt/abcam, is obviously higher than the number of 490.000 autonomous truckers who are active in Brazil that has been published by CNT (2018). Abcam is a member of CNT.

6 Interview with Caroline Brangel, ABCAM, September 19, 2018, Brasilia.

7 Ibid.

8 The Brazilian state has a 36.8 per cent stake in the company, and controls 50.5 per cent of the voting rights. The majority of the seats in the administrative council of the company are filled by persons appointed by the federal government of Brazil.

9 Interview with Cloviomar Cararine Pereira, Federação Única dos Petroleiros (FUP), October 17, 2018, Rio de Janeiro; interview with Sergio Pope Edisen, Sindicato dos Petroleiros do Rio de Janeiro (SINDIPETRO-RJ), October 17, 2018, Rio de Janeiro.

10 The volumes of export commodities in 2015 were the following: 379 million (m) tons of minerals, 71m tons of corn and soy, 51m tons of fuels, 26m tons of sugar and ethanol, 19m tons of metal products, 15m tons of chemical products, 14m tons of paper and cellulose, 6m tons of meat, 4m tons of timber and timber products and 2m tons of coffee (MTPA, 2018, p. 21).

11 Interviews with Fabian Pompermayer, infrastructure expert at government think tank IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada), 20 September 2018, Brasilia; Eimair Ebeling, Ministério de Transportes, Portos e Aviação Civil, 20 September 2018, Brasilia; Cleber Vieira, consultancy company Agroconsult, 25 October 2018, São Paulo.

12 The volume of transport services dropped 10.4 percent in 2015 and in 2016, and grew 0.9 percent in 2017, and 2.1 percent in 2018 (CNT, 2019b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jörg Nowak

Jörg Nowak is a Visiting Professor at the postgraduate program Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Rural/Environment and Rural Development (PPG-MADER), University of Brasilia, Brazil.