I am happy to announce that I will be launching an advocacy campaign in 2025. The past few years have seen quite a few of these campaigns in the wine space. I must say from the outset that each of them represents a welcome initiative that deserves a warm welcome. I have only noticed a corner of the trade that – by any objective measure – contains some of our most disadvantaged colleagues. However, they have no one to defend them. Their work is riskier than any other in the wine industry, lower-paid, more economically risky, and done by the most ethnically diverse part of our industry. Yet it was routinely ignored. I have no idea why. But read on and you might be able to find out.
Working as a delivery driver is the eighth most dangerous job in Britain. The wine trade (as we shall see somewhat) employs thousands of them. By some accounts, working as a delivery driver is slightly more dangerous than working as a firefighter, while it is slightly less dangerous than iron smelting. Although thanks to various government policies, Britain now has no iron smelters. So delivery drivers can expect to jump to the top of the world league table to sit behind waste pickers and roofers. (In fairness, and given various government policies, jobs in the drinks industry may go the same way as iron smelters too.)
I used to go out with the delivery drivers every December in Glasgow. I'm 55 now, and I'm not sure I can still do it. It doesn't matter. The average life expectancy of the drivers I went out with was fifty-three. Life expectancy at that time was less than that of a man living in Baghdad. This was when Baghdad was in the midst of an actual war. Certainly part of the lower life expectancy of drivers was because they were largely from one of the most deprived council wards in the UK. Actually in Europe. But it was also because the job is extremely physically demanding and exhausting and requires a high-visibility vest and safety boots for good reason.
This does not mean that warehouse picking is the safest option. Let me refer you briefly to the House of Commons where the Business and Trade Committee took oral evidence on 17 December last year from two Amazon UK directors. The committee chairman pointed out that Amazon UK called ambulances to its warehouses 1,400 times in five years. Amazon's HR director for logistics, Stuart Morgan, doesn't seem to feel this number is particularly high (much to the committee's surprise) claiming Amazon is “50% safer” than other companies in the sector. The committee said it had previously heard that there was hardly anyone at Amazon who had worked in its warehouses for more than two years and had not been injured. Jennifer Kearney, HR director at Amazon UK and Ireland, reassured everyone by saying: “This does not fit with my experience.” So it's okay. But if this is what sounds like “50% safer” than the norm, then you start to wonder if a common reason people find themselves trapped working in warehouses is because they no longer have enough fingers to type.
