Parcel Delivery Workers and the degradation of work

On July 11th, Theresa May, heralded a new direction for her government: hard pressed workers would be given a voice on company boards and the excessive earnings inequalities that have become an entrenched feature of our workplaces should be reined-in. Though May’s speech, made on the day that it was confirmed she would become Prime Minister, was short on specifics, the overall tone was suggestive of a more compassionate and inclusive Conservatism. Whether or not this will materialise – and her voting record in office does not bode well – she was right to fix on the plight of the voiceless, low paid workers that have become an entrenched feature of twenty first century Britain. Subject to a daily diet of routine, high pressured, and closely monitored tasks, millions of workers experience minimal discretion, autonomy and dignity at work. Parcel delivery workers, currently in the spotlight because of the exponential rise of internet shopping, highlight many of the salient issues.

The volume of parcel deliveries in Britain has exploded, accounting in 2016 for more than 1 billion home deliveries. Britain, the biggest online shopping market in Europe, boasts a growing army of workers engaged in the connected activities of logistics, distribution and delivery. Transformations in the logistics function and parcel delivery have been directed at securing more exacting, demanding and time critical levels of service delivery at minimum cost. The ‘last mile of delivery’ at the end of the supply chain is said to be the key to competitive advantage. The application of increasingly complex IT systems which track and trace the movement of parcels under the gaze of the final customer is paramount. This reconfiguration in turn has fuelled a burgeoning logistics infrastructure and a myriad of subcontracted supply chains and relationships. The result is an increasingly competitive market for parcel delivery companies.  Amazon and other large retailers entice their customers with `free and immediate’ delivery which relies upon the supply of flexible labour services at minimum cost.

Technology is critical to the successful coordination and control of product movement. The application of algorithmic optimisation techniques and routing software has revolutionized logistics, speeding the circulation of commodities through the annihilation of space by time on the one hand, and affording closer monitoring and surveillance of worker effort on the other. The introduction of hand-held Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) has also been crucial. These devices render the supply chain transparent by affording senders and their recipients `sight’ of an item’s progress and expected delivery time. The efficiency gains made possible however must be set alongside the costs for labour. Workers may be subject to labour intensification (more labour input per unit of labour time) and dehumanizing patterns of control that render them literally appendages to digital devices. Whether or not they are depends on their location within the sector.

There are three main interconnected tiers. The first constitutes large parcel delivery companies, in which employment relations are framed by extant collective agreements with a history of bargaining over terms and conditions. The latter may be renegotiated in the context of the pressures brought by service level agreements, but provide some guarantee of protection for a long-standing organised workforce. The second, based in depots and working alongside directly employed drivers, are the ‘self-employed’ owner drivers on piece rate pay. A third tier is populated with home-based so called ‘life-style’ couriers, also technically self-employed, but using their own vehicles without close organisational ties or a fixed workplace. Sometimes all three sources of labour power may be present within a single enterprise.