New Report: The Future of Warehouse Work: Technological Change in the U.S. Logistics Industry

A new report by CUED researchers Beth Gutelius, Ph.D., and Nik Theodore, Ph.D., commissioned by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and Working Partnerships USA, examines whether technology and its effects on warehouse work will lead to unemployment and displacement in the foreseeable future, given the intense popular focus on robots and automation. 

But instead of causing widespread job loss, the authors found that over the next decade, new technology will likely have transformative and potentially negative effects on the nature and quality of warehouse work, including the following:

• Work intensification due to an “increase in the workload and pace of work, with new methods of monitoring workers,” such as Amazon’s MissionRacer video game, which pits workers against each other to assemble customer orders the fastest.
• The potential introduction of “new health and safety hazards, as well as increased employee turnover due to overwork and burnout.” Little is known about the physical and psychological effects of new technologies, but increases in productivity may test the limits of workers’ bodies, who may opt to leave a job to avoid health issues.
• De-skilling jobs, where traditional roles are broken down into subtasks and technologies are applied, which removes the skills previously required of working people and can lead to lower wages and more job insecurity.
• Increased surveillance at work as a result of new technologies for worker oversight, like algorithmic management, wearable devices, and autonomous mobile robots that “allow close tracking of workers’ movements, including walk speed, routes, bottlenecks, and break time” and allow regulation of worker time that’s “granular, scalable, and relentless.”

Since young, male, and Latinx/Black workers are over-represented in warehouse work— workers of color constitute 66% of front-line workers in the warehousing industry but just 37% of the American labor force — the effects of technological change will be borne disproportionately by people of color.

The report suggests that the trajectory of technological change is not inevitable, and calls on policymakers, employers, and workers’ organizations to  think creatively about how to ensure both innovation and shared prosperity. The gains accrued from technological efficiencies should be shared with workers and workers must be proactively involved in the process of introducing new technologies.

The findings in the report are based on in-depth industry research and extensive interviews with warehouse operators, management consultants, and technology providers.