The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Fulfilling the ‘British way’: beyond constrained choice—Amazon workers' lived experiences of workfare
Abstract
This article makes a distinctive contribution to critiquing the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (TRMWP). Rejecting TRMWP's abstracted concept of ‘choice’ and its celebration of the ‘British way’ of job creation, it emphasises the degree of compulsion experienced by low‐pay, temporary workers in local labour markets. The empirical focus is on Amazon's ‘fulfilment centre’ at Swansea and draws on testimonies of ‘associates’, both permanent and, mostly, agency temps including migrant workers. The article situates these worker experiences in job‐starved labour markets, considering the role of temporary worker agencies (TWAs) and the effects of workfare and benefit sanctions. The evidence compels a reconceptualisation of the triangular relationship between TWAs, employers and temp workers as quadrilateral, emphasising the role of the state. A brutal, digitally enabled lean workplace regime intersects with a brutal, digitally enabled workfare regime which serves to thoroughly critique Taylor's absurdly optimistic characterisation of choice.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“For instance, while numerous studies have examined Amazon warehouses as emblematic cases of technologically intensive logistics (e.g.Briken and Taylor 2018;Delfanti 2021;Guerrero-Valle et al. 2025;Nataraj et al. 2025), relatively scant research has explored the extent of digitalisation within logistics SMEs (small-to medium-sized enterprises), which, despite their scale, make up much of the sector”
From Reflections on Sociotechnical Change: New Directions for and Continuities in Research on New Technology, Work, and Employment (2026) · cites this paper as Briken and Taylor 2018
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 35
- 10.1093/indlaw/dwx028 · DOI
- Bloodworth J., 2018, Hired—Six Months Undercover in Low‐Wage Britain
- 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2012.00906.x · DOI
- 10.2307/2094921 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1177/0950017012469064 · DOI
- Danford A., 1996, Work Organisation Inside Japanese Firms in South Wales: A Break from Taylorism
- DWP(2015)ESA work capability assessments. Quarterly Official Statistics Bulletin. 11 June
- 10.1332/175982714X13875305151043 · DOI
- 10.1177/0730888416689813 · DOI
- 10.1177/0261018317726622 · DOI
- 10.1108/00483480610645795 · DOI
- 10.1108/01425450810910055 · DOI
- Fudge J., 2012, Precarious migrant status and precarious employment: the paradox of international rights for migrant workers, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 34, 95
- 10.1093/oso/9780198785446.001.0001 · DOI
- 10.1177/0309132514548303 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1017/S0047279407001171 · DOI
- 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2008.00686.x · DOI
- NAO, 2016, DWP Benefit Sanctions
- 10.2307/j.ctt1t896vj · DOI
- 10.1111/1468-2427.00325 · DOI
- PCS(2014)Opposing sanctions session PCS Conference Brighton 14 Mayhttps://www.pcs.org.uk/department‐for‐work‐and‐pensions/news/opposing‐sanctionsAccessed 28 May 2018
- Potter M., 2014, Picking on vulnerable migrants in conditions of vulnerability, Industrial Relations Journal., 41, 446
- 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2004.00337.x · DOI
- Shildrick T., 2012, Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low‐Pay
- 10.1002/psp.1732 · DOI
- Stone B., 2014, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- Trickey H., 2001, An Offer You Cannot Refuse': Workfare in International Perspective
- TRMWP, 2017, The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices
- TUC, 2015, The Decent Jobs Deficit: The Human Cost of Zero Hours Working in the UK
- UK Parliament(2015)House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions—Beyond the Oakley Review Supplementary Evidence Submitted by PCS. 18 March. London: House of Commonshttps://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmworpen/814/81402.htmAccessed 28 May 2018
- 10.1215/9780822392255 · DOI · Paper page
- Williams L. J., 1999, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics, 1974–1996
- Wills J., 2010, Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour
- WISERD, 2011, Key Features of Change in Industrial Composition of Employment Over the Past Three Decades in Wales
- 10.1017/S0047279411001000 · DOI
Cited by
New social relations of digital technology and the future of work: Beyond technological determinism
Joyce, S., Umney, C., Whittaker, X., & Stuart, M. (2023) · New Technology, Work and Employment · doi:10.1111/ntwe.12276 · Cited by 97
Howcroft, D., Lucio, M. M., & Taylor, P. (2026) · New Technology, Work and Employment · doi:10.1111/ntwe.70049 · Cited by 1
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Briken, K., & Taylor, P.
- Affiliations
- Department of Work, Employment and Organization Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde Glasgow UK
- Venue
- Industrial Relations Journal
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-11
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 5-6
- Pages
- 438-458
- ISSN
- 0019-8692
- 1468-2338
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 0
- Language
- en
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
