HuLog Circle - Maite Tapia

Maite Tapia

Maite Tapia is an associate professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on workers' participation in the workplace, as well as workers' organisation within the broader society, specifically studying workers' social identity and systematic inequality.

She received her PhD in 2013 from the Department of Comparative and International Labour at Cornell University's School of Industrial Relations.

Seminar

On Monday 4 September 2023, the School of Social Sciences is hosting a lecture with Maite Tapia. She will speak on 'The Militarization of Employment Relations: Contemporary Worker Control in Amazon Fulfillment Centres'.

Through a socio-structural analysis of Amazon's fulfilment centre in Bessemer, Alabama, she examines the impact of the company's policing practices through the lens of its predominantly black workforce. By grounding this research in critical race and intersectional theory and focusing this analysis on the stories of black workers, we discover that Amazon effectively 'militarises' its labour relations through the use of intensive surveillance, public and private oversight, and plantation-style management. Historical legacies of racial labour exploitation and policing reinforce a uniquely intensified control regime on the often supersized black workforce in the US South.