Sociotechnical Change in British Supermarkets: Examining the Role of Labour

When predicting the future of retail work, commentators tend to focus on automation and labour replacement and neglect the continued role played by labour, particularly in food retail. To understand this role, this article draws on both interview and newspaper data to show how change unfolded in the sector from before to just after the Coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, it shows how increased technology adoption and use in food retail occurred alongside an increased reliance on labour. The availability of a flexible labour pool that was easy to scale and later disband enabled employers to respond to increased consumer demand rapidly. In contrast to futurist predictions of the proliferation of labour-replacing technologies, the analysis shows how food retailers continued to prioritise short-term solutions contingent on human labour rather than investments in longer-term automation programmes, reflecting historical patterns of sociotechnical change within the sector.