In Praise of Pickers and Drivers

I’m delighted to announce that in 2025 I will be launching an advocacy campaign. The last few years have seen quite a few of these campaigns in wine. And I should say from the outset that every one of them is a welcome initiative to be warmly applauded. It’s just I’ve spotted a corner of the trade that - by any objective measure - contains some of our most disadvantaged colleagues. Yet they have nobody to advocate for them. Their work is more dangerous than any other in wine, as well as lower paid, more economically precarious, and done by the most ethnically diverse part of our industry. And yet it has been routinely overlooked. I have no idea why. But read on and you may be able to figure it out.

Being a delivery driver is the eighth most dangerous job in Britain. And the wine business employs (sort of, as we’ll see) thousands of them. By some accounts, being a delivery driver is slightly more dangerous than being a firefighter, while slightly less dangerous than iron smelting. Although thanks to assorted government policies Britain now has no iron smelters. So delivery drivers can expect to jump up in the world’s-shittest-league-table to sit behind refuse collectors and roofers. (In fairness, given various governments’ policies, jobs in the drinks industry may go the way of iron smelters too).

I used to go out with delivery drivers every December in Glasgow. I’m now fifty five, and I’m not sure I could still do it. No matter. The drivers I went out with had an average life expectancy of fifty three. A life expectancy at that time lower than a man living in Baghdad. And that was when Baghdad was in the middle of an actual war. Sure, part of the low life expectancy of drivers was because they were largely from one of the most disadvantaged council wards in the UK. Indeed in Europe. But it was also because the job is physically demanding, highly stressful, and requires a hi-vis vest and safety boots for good reason.

Not that picking in warehouses is the safer option. Let me refer you briefly to the House of Commons where the Business and Trade Committee took oral evidence on 17th December last year from two directors at Amazon UK. The committee chair pointed out that Amazon UK had called ambulances to its warehouses 1,400 times in five years. Amazon’s HR director for Amazon Logistics, Stuart Morgan, didn’t seem to feel this was particularly high (to the astonishment of the committee) claiming Amazon was “50% safer” than other businesses in the sector. The committee said they had heard earlier that there was hardly anyone at Amazon who had worked in its warehouses for more than two years who hadn’t suffered an injury. Jennifer Kearney, the HR Director for Amazon UK and Ireland reassured everyone by saying “that does not match my experience”. So that’s okay. But if this is what “50% safer” than the norm looks like, you start to wonder if a common reason people find themselves trapped in warehouse work is because they no longer have enough fingers to type.