Warehousing consent?. Mobilité de la main-d’œuvre et stratégies syndicales au principe d’une conflictualité différenciée dans les entrepôts italiens et français

By comparing two case studies in Italy and France, this article examines the effects of the casualization of employment in the logistics sector on collective labour movements and current forms of resistance at work. In both cases, Padua and Sénart, the logistics sector is a source of significant job insecurity: in France, through the segmentation of the workforce produced by the use of temporary employment agencies, which mainly recruit low-skilled workers belonging to the subaltern fractions of the labour force; in Italy, through the subcontracting of the workforce to cooperatives that mainly recruit migrant workers. Whereas over the last ten years Italy has seen the emergence of a large-scale labour movement in the warehouses of the north of the country, including in Padua, a movement in which migrant workers have been the main actors, the rare episodes of labour conflicts in France are mainly defensive and rarely go beyond the scope of the single warehouse. By focusing on the occupational mobility practices of the workforce and on local trade unions’ strategies, this article shows that the captivity of the workforce and the strength of migrants’ community networks, on which Italian trade unions’ strategies have relayed on, have played a central role in workers’ collective organization in Padua. On the contrary, in Melun-Sénart, workers’ mobility strategies tend to restrict labour actions to a small group of union activists belonging to the most stable segment of the workforce. JEL: L81, J42, M51, J52, R23