Recent research from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (IRL) looked into how the demands of working  in the e-commerce sector affected warehouse workers.

"E-commerce heightens the frenzy among retailers to satisfy customers with convenience, speed and cheap prices, offerings that all erode job quality for workers behind the scenes,” said Alexander Kowalski, assistant professor of human resource studies in the ILR School, in an article in the Cornell Chronicle. “This is a problematic trend for a large and growing share of the labor market – but it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Kowalski is the first author of “At the Mercy of the Market: E-Commerce and Warehouse Work in the United States,” published May 19 in the ILR Review. Co-authors are Sanjay Pinto and Beth Gutelius, senior research fellows at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development; and Steven Vallas, professor emeritus of sociology at Northeastern University.

Seeking a big-picture view of U.S. warehouse work, which tripled over the past 20 years as e-commerce increased to 16.4% of retail sales, the researchers surveyed around 400 hourly employees representative of warehouse workers. The group worked at e-commerce fulfillment centers primarily reacting to consumer orders, called business-to-consumer (B2C) warehouses; others worked in distribution and sorting centers serving brick-and-mortar stores or manufacturers, called business-to-business (B2B) warehouses.

The results confirmed what the researchers called a  “B2C Effect,” which was that warehouse jobs at e-commerce sites were worse than those at typical warehouses.

The research found that these workers experienced more pressure to move quickly and avoid taking breaks, greater exposure to unsafe situations and significantly worse overall well-being – a measure of anxiety, burnout and stress – but were not paid more.

“The warehouse segment dedicated to e-commerce offers lower-quality jobs across the board,” Kowalski said. “The results suggest that more time-sensitive pressures related to speedy delivery make for especially low-quality jobs in e-commerce.”

“We are going down a path that should be worrisome for workers and for consumers alike,” Kowalski said. “But if there is a silver lining, it’s that one can arrange e-commerce operations in a way that shifts some of the burden off of workers. Now it’s up to companies to choose to do things that way.”