Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility

5‘Supply chain capitalism’

Exploring job quality for delivery workers in the UK

Kirsty Newsome, Sian Moore and Cilla Ross

Introduction

The focus of this chapter is to explore the dynamics and impact of supply chain capitalism upon the job quality and work quality (Muñoz de Bustillo, Fernández-Macías and Antón, 2009) of parcel delivery workers in the UK. While Muñoz de Bustillo’s focus is upon work quality and employment quality, the chapter focuses not just on directly employed workers, but also on dependent self-employment and the apparent extraction of parcel delivery workers from an employment relationship – we thus formally refer to ‘job’ rather than ‘employment quality’. However, the data presented in the chapter exposes the fiction ...