"Workforce transitions and worker experiences during the pandemic", 25 January 2023

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified existing trends in the growth of e-commerce, online shopping and fast fashion, resulting in serious challenges for high-street stores. Thousands of jobs have been lost in fashion retail following company collapses or takeovers by online fashion brands…At the same time there has been a rapid increase in job vacancies in the transport, logistics and warehouse sector…Emerging evidence suggests that the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic is a significant rise in economic inactivity with workers leaving the labour force promoting labour shortages…

The research presented in this report offers a labour market analysis, alongside worker interviews…

Summary

The rise in online retail

• Employment in the wholesale, retail, and repair of motor vehicles…shows a trend of decline amid the pandemic and has yet to recover…
• There was a large influx of workers into postal and courier activities during the height of the pandemic…The numbers have returned to below the 2019 levels…The number of workers in warehousing and support for storage in the final quarter of 2021 also dropped…reflecting the current labour shortage.
• …there has been an exit from retail cashier and check-out operator occupations…in the first two quarters of 2021…The trend does not hold for sales and retail assistants and may reflect the restructuring of retail to online delivery and increased automation of checkout in supermarkets.
• The rise in online retail is reflected in the Official National Statistics (ONS) Vacancy Survey and job advert estimates by Adzuna that show a 75 per cent increase in job adverts in transport, logistics, and warehousing…
• Logistics UK (2021) report the highest number of vacancies in transport and logistics since records began with COVID-19 and Brexit creating ‘a perfect storm for skills shortages in the UK’, highlighting ‘a boom in vacancies for lower-skilled and lower-paid jobs.’

Sectoral and Occupational flows – who is moving and where

• …the number of job seekers remains low due to reduced labour force participation and moves to economic inactivity primarily due to ill health and workers above 50 leaving employment.
• In logistics in particular, the post-Brexit and pandemic periods have seen the exodus of EU workers…
• There are suggestions that women have moved into male-dominated jobs. The proportion of women working in warehousing and postal and courier services (including delivery) has increased (although both remain disproportionately male[1]dominated sectors).
• There appears to have been small influx of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) workers into warehouse work over the pandemic…with a decline in proportions in retail…and an exodus of BME workers from postal and courier activities, although the proportions of BME workers remain comparatively high in this sector….
• Worker experiences confirm that furlough led to some shift in occupational and sectoral segregation by gender. In delivery respondents reported an influx of a range of furloughed workers during the pandemic, including more women…

Working Conditions

• Warehouse and distribution work offers greater security in terms of guaranteed hours and fixed shifts in comparison to retail where minimum hours contracts and unpredictable working time are prevalent. While directly employed drivers are more likely to be covered by collective bargaining and have access to employment rights, this is not the case for self-employed delivery drivers…
• There is evidence that demand for warehouse and distribution workers has pushed up hourly rates and that there are significant pay rises for drivers.
• Warehouse work was considered…as particularly gruelling…explaining labour shortages and high turnover, with a suggestion that automation and robotisation might be necessary to save the physical cost to human physical and mental health.
• Experiences appear to be generational with older retail workers having perceptions of retail as a career based on customer service skills that had been degraded. As was the case with warehouse work, some older workers suggested there was high turnover amongst younger workers who do not put up with poor working conditions.

Automation and worker surveillance

• Vacancy rates suggest that currently workers have not been substantively displaced by automation, with energy costs a factor…
• Workers expressed mixed feelings about technological surveillance at work, with some feeling constantly under scrutiny and that their autonomy over work is compromised. Others take such surveillance for granted and some feel that it provides protections for their health and safety and against customer abuse and potential allegations of misconduct.

Worker representation

• …where trade unions are recognised workplace representatives play a key role in mediating technology and constraining its use in disciplinary measures against workers.
• Tight labour markets have enabled unions to make gains in terms of pay and conditions. Labour shortages also give workers confidence to challenge and resist disciplinary regimes, including those which arise from technological monitoring of performance.
• " hile the terms and conditions of directly paid delivery drivers attached to depots were determined by collective bargaining, home delivery is based on so-called ‘self-employment’ where couriers are paid by delivery with considerable elements of unpaid labour. However, unions have started to make inroads with union representation and negotiations over employment rights."