Moeko Yamazaki is a graduate student in the Department of History. Her project, “Making the World on Time: FedEx UPS, and the History of the American Logistics Industry since the 1970s,” illustrates that logistics has been at the forefront of transforming the post-WWII employment relationship in the United States. To make supply chains, production, and retail more efficient, companies like FedEx and UPS have increased their reliance on a contingent workforce, including part-timers, “independent contractors,” and temps, many of whom have been immigrants. This project examines how various types of precarious employment enabled dramatic growth in the logistics industry since the 1970s. It also explores how unions and labor laws have tried, successfully and unsuccessfully, to protect workers.