Instant delivery could be the death knell of logistics workers

In today’s digital world dominated by tech giants, e-commerce has taken over the retail industry. Our dire need for immediacy in nearly all aspects of life (news, communication, etc.) has made the once seemingly absurd idea of immediate delivery of everyday products the norm. Look behind the curtains and you will find the severe consequences of our need for instantaneous results.

Recently, The New York Times published a scathing report about the working conditions at a Tennessee warehouse. The report describes a beige, windowless building with no air-conditioning, allowing temperatures to reach above 100 degrees. Fainting on the job was not uncommon.

It gets worse.

One woman interviewed was repeatedly denied lighter work after finding out she was pregnant. Eventually, the heavy workload caught up to her. She had a miscarriage at work. Three other women working at the same warehouse also had  miscarriages that same year.

It gets even worse.

Last year, a woman died of cardiac arrest on the warehouse floor. Rather than cease all operations to address the obvious, employees told The New York Times that supervisors instructed them to keep working.

Although The New York Times’ story published in October highlights the dangers pregnant women face in the workplace, the news publication released a podcast on Monday, Nov. 26, using the same story but with a different hook: The human toll of instant delivery.

The company that runs the warehouse highlighted in The New York Times piece is XPO Logistics.

“XPO is one of the biggest companies that most people have never heard of,” Jessica Silver-Greenberg, business reporter at The New York Times, said in The Daily podcast.

Maybe you have heard of XPO. Land Line has reported on the company many times, and its trucks are pretty much everywhere. Although the podcast focuses on the effect of instant delivery on warehouse workers, the similarities between warehouse workers and truckers go much further than being hired by the same company.

Instant delivery and trucking today

Amazon has changed the retail landscape to an environment that is virtually unrecognizable from the retail industry of the pre-Amazon days. With two-day, one-day and even same-day delivery, retailers have struggled to compete with Amazon.

Enter XPO.

Major retailers, including Nike, Disney and Verizon, have hired Greenwich, Conn.-based XPO Logistics to keep up with Amazon. Essentially, XPO does all the dirty work behind online sales by packaging and shipping products and getting them to shops ASAP.

As highlighted in The New York Times piece, this has resulted in “modern-day slavery” at these warehouses. However, similar effects can be seen in the shipping side of the equation as well.

Tasha Murrell, the focus of the podcast version of the story, claimed warehouse workers would put in 14-15 hours a day with no notice. Truckers can relate. How many truck drivers have worked similar hours when accounting for detention time?

Warehouse workers were always forced to work beyond limitations. Once quotas were met, managers saw an opportunity to raise the quota bar, a bar that continuously moved upward. How many truckers have been told by dispatchers to keep moving, regardless of conditions?

Although the demand for instant delivery has kept warehouse workers and truckers employed, it has come at the cost of poor work conditions.

As pointed out by The New York Times, these jobs are not designed for humans. In order to get the type of production these companies demand, they have two options: 1) modern-day slave conditions or 2) automation.

The latter is another similarity between warehouse workers and truckers. Rather than tailor the work environment to account for the fact that a human being is doing the job, some companies are instead attempting to eliminate the human altogether.

For warehouse workers, it’s robots with moving arms near the conveyor belt. For truckers, it’s self-driving trucks.

Instant delivery and trucking tomorrow

While truckers and warehouse workers are working themselves to the bone trying to keep up with the nearly impossible demands of consumers, companies are being forced to address the issue of meeting that demand while humans are still doing the work.

In the case of XPO, that’s not going so well. Murrell has been attempting to unionize XPO warehouse employees. She has reached out to the Teamsters, the same union that has already reached out to XPO truckers, another similarity.

Like most attempts to unionize in the 21st century, Murrell’s efforts face an uphill battle. XPO details the downsides of unionizing in the employee handbook. Over the past several decades, unions have been demonized by right-to-work advocates and downplayed not important as they once were.

According to The New York Times, XPO has reacted to the less-than-flattering reports. The company has been pressured to increase wages, offer more breaks and be more explicit about work hours – for the warehouse workers at least. It would be nice if truckers received the same attention.

But this is all temporary. The macroeconomic landscape of immediate delivery will likely only get stronger. As soon as it is feasible, companies like XPO will replace humans with automation to fulfill consumer demands.

For decades, retail and trucking were good, steady jobs that don’t require a degree. Retail has been replaced by warehouse jobs, including worse conditions. Trucking is still around, but work conditions are far worse than they were and so is the pay for many. And companies will continue to try find ways to replace both warehouse workers and truckers with machines.

Unless consumers suddenly realize what a relatively insignificant convenience is costing those who facilitate it, companies need to rethink how they treat those facilitators.