Walmart announced last week that it started a pilot program where store employees will deliver packages from stores on their way home from work. If this practice is adopted company wide and adopted by the retail industry as a whole, it will change the nature of retail employment.
As written about on this blog before, delivery and warehousing jobs tend to have more physical injures than traditional retail clerk jobs. If employee delivery becomes a regular part of retail employment, then retail jobs should become more hazardous. One positive part about Walmart using employees to make deliveries would be the fact that those employees should be covered by workers’ compensation if they are injured while delivering packages. Fed Ex has faced legal challenges for misclassifying their delivery drivers as independent contractors. Uber, who has also faced challenges on how they classify their drivers, also has a package delivery service.
Delivery jobs tend to be more physically demanding than retail clerk jobs and can also subject employees to DOT requirements. If package delivery becomes an expected part of retail employment, retail jobs will have more physical and occupational requirements. This could mean in the future that retail jobs may not be a fallback option for workers from other physically demanding occupations who become unable to do their old jobs because of injuries or health problems.
The rise of online shopping has greatly reduced the number of stores of traditional retailers. This decline in so-called “big box” stores lead to a parallel reduction in retail employment. Jamelle Bouie pointed out in Slate that this collapse in retail employment has harmed women, people of color and urbanites who tend to work in retail. Bouie points out, I think correctly, that retail employees tend to be disrespected in part because of gender and race. Bouie also states the decline in retail employment has received much less attention than declines in employment in other sectors like manufacturing and mining that tend to employ more white males.
In contrast to traditional retail workers, delivery drivers tend to be paid better. UPS delivery drivers seem to enjoy a certain level of prestige, respect and even a mystique within the workforce. (11) Maybe some of that respect will rub-off on retail workers if they become delivery employees. On the flip slide, competition from largely non-unionized and lower-paid retail workers may cut into pay and benefits that delivery drivers and their unions have fought for over the years.