Subcontracted Migrant Labour and Just-in-time Retail Chain Requirements: A Qualitative Research on the Bagged Salad Commodity System in Northern Italy

This article focuses on the commodity system of the ready-to-eat bagged salad in Italy, and in particular on the transformations in labour organization and labour relationships in processing plants in the Lombardy Region. Here, the most part of employees are migrant workers, especially of Indian origin. Our analysis concerns three main points. First, a relevant part of the labour operations in processing plants are outsourced to smaller manufacturers or subcontracted to workers’ cooperatives, which mainly employ migrant workers, with the aim of reducing labour costs and reaching a greater production flexibi- lity. Second, labour organization and working shifts are explicitly organized to meet retail chains’ just-in-time requirements. Third, some trade unions officers act as mediators between management and migrant workers in defining labour organization in the processing plants. The field study is based upon thirty-eight in-depth interviews with actors at all the levels of this commodity chain.