ILPC 2027

Parcel delivery workers are currently in the spotlight. Fuelled by the exponential rise of internet shopping, 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, creating pressure on cost and resulting in a degradation of work and employment for parcel delivery workers.

 This paper explores the changes in the contractual status of parcel delivery workers and the growth in self-employment.  Our research drawn from a series of case-studies and interviews with key sector respondents highlights that there are three main interconnected tiers of employment. 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.

The paper will explore the contrasting experiences of work of these inter-connected groups of employees. It will reveal that `self-employment', so often celebrated as a route to personal liberty, masks a variety of work practices and experiences. In parcel delivery self-employment means the removal of basic rights, safeguards on hours, holiday and sickness entitlements, and for ‘lifestyle couriers’ decent pay.  In theoretical terms the aim is to provide a deeper conceptual understanding of the battle for ‘value in motion’ (Newsome 2015) and the role of labour within circulation.  Moreover, the paper wishes to contribute to debates on precarious work, highlighting the inter-connections and inter-dependence amongst parcel delivery workers.