Life And Death In The Warehouse | Interview with Joseph Bullman (Creator & Director)

Where did this idea come from?

A few years ago, I found myself in a little Welsh village, which had once thrived on coal. At the time the only prospect for work in this particular village was temping at a vast distribution centre nearby. People would get a text from the temp agency first thing in the morning, but for some it would be too late to get the bus to the warehouse in time to start work. So some villagers had taken to sleeping in the village bus stop – just in case they got a text from the temp agency that day.

My interest was tweaked. How desperate did these villagers need to be – and why did these workplaces operate behind such a rigid firewall of secrecy?

As the idea for a factual drama took shape I joined forces with the award-winning Executive Producer Aysha Rafaele – who I’d worked with on Killed by My Debt and The Left Behind – and who specialises in turning factual research into compelling drama. We brought on a new-to-television scriptwriter Helen Black (whose dad had been a miner and who had family working in a distribution centre) and using the real-world accounts of warehouse workers as inspiration, we set about turning our research into a script.

There is a huge amount of research behind this docudrama. What were the challenges to bring it to life?

No stories are more amazing than true stories. All our previous films have been rooted in real–world research. We spent several years speaking, mostly anonymously, to workers in the sector. They told us about companies in which  technological/algorithmic surveillance-and-control is being used to extract every second of value from their working days.  This system of total, second-by-second control of people’s working lives is widespread in multiple companies, operating in Britain and around the world. Though the story featured in this film is not based on any single event or on any specific company, the film is inspired by their real-life stories.

We spoke to some pickers who had to hide their union membership from their bosses because it would have put their job at risk. We spoke to a former trainee manager who’d left after a few months, sickened at being forced to give ‘disciplinaries’ and ‘personal enhancement plans’ to pregnant women whose ‘pick rates’ had fallen behind. We built a picture of young managers, straight out of university, drinking the corporate Kool Aid, and enforcing the dystopian rules with a sinister PR corporate-speak. Cracks in the wall of secrecy were opening up.  It became clear that distribution centre workers were being subjected to a regime in which ‘idle time’ (toilet breaks and conversations) and ‘pick’ or ‘aspirational’ rates (the number of items picked per hour) are constantly measured using round the clock surveillance, which can lead to disciplinary hearings and ruthless ‘off-boarding’ (sacking). Pregnant women who fall below their target “pick rate” are routinely subjected to constant CCTV and algorithmic surveillance, “self enhancement plans” and monitoring of “idle time.”  And sadly there are accounts in the public domain of workers suffering miscarriages in multiple different settings. At an international conference, we met warehouse workers from around the world, all suffering the same working conditions.

Why is this such an important story to tell?

Some may find the events described in this film hard to believe. But every scene in it is marinated in years of real-world research. Although not all companies treat their workers in this way, we were surprised to discover how widespread the practices we document in the film are across so many companies in the warehouse and distribution industry.

This film will shed a light, and raise questions, on some of our most modern corporations and their working conditions.