35%. More than one employee in three has a work rhythm imposed by computerized monitoring or control. And almost as many (34%) saw the intensity of their work increased by time pressure. If we distinguish between professional categories, the impact is even stronger: 46% for unskilled workers and 56% for skilled workers, according to figures from the Ministry of Labor.
This intensification of work is the product of “Taylorism in the digital age” which has modified the organization of work over the last twenty years. Activity in logistics warehouses is, in this respect, particularly interesting to study, because the sector has been strongly marked by the development of digital technologies.
Jérôme Gautié and Coralie Perez, two labor market specialists, analyzed it to demonstrate how transformations in the retail supply chain have changed working conditions to intensify it, particularly when the low-skilled worker is not completely replaced by the machine, but is subject to it.
Their study, carried out as part of the scientific mediation project “What do we know about work? ” of Interdisciplinary laboratory for public policy evaluation (Liepp), broadcast in collaboration with Presses de Sciences Po on the site’s Employment channel Lemonde.fris based on research carried out in France and Germany on retail logistics workers in large distribution chains (excluding drivers) and on the results of comparative research on innovations and quality of employment in Europe, carried out as part of the QuInnE project (“Quality of Jobs and Innovation Generated Employment Outcomes”) between 2015 and 2018.
Disappearance of autonomy at work
Researchers have identified three drivers of this work intensification: the shift from a supply-driven to a demand-driven supply chain; the outsourcing of activities deemed peripheral; and e-commerce which has encouraged the search for ever shorter delivery times, reinforcing the logic of “just-in-time”.
The population concerned is significant: “in 2019, the sum of “skilled handling, warehousing and transport workers”, “unskilled handlers” and “unskilled sorting, packaging and shipping workers” was around 780 000, or 14.6% of all workers as defined by INSEE”, indicate the researchers.
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