A delivery worker checks orders over the phone in the rain. Photo: CNSphoto

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In early 2023, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions issued the Ninth National Workforce Survey, which shows that 84 million laborers were employed in new forms of work. Delivery workers numbered 13 million, accounting for 15% of the entire workforce in new forms of employment. During the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of delivery workers soared. On Meituan, China’s leading online service platform, for example, the number jumped from 4.7 million to 6.24 million from 2020 to 2022, up 32.8%. 

The massive increase of laborers in new forms of employment is closely related to the thriving of the platform economy, while the success of internet platforms is inseparable from rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. As the core driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI is setting off a new global sci-tech wave. AI not only occupies a strategic commanding height in international sci-tech competition but is also revolutionizing models of production and lifestyles in human society. While fueling production progress and facilitating daily life, the extensive application of AI in the platform economy has also provoked worries about labor deskilling and technological unemployment caused by advancements of science and technology. 

In July 2017, Meituan disclosed at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference that in the following three to five years, unmanned delivery vehicles were expected to be promoted on a large scale and drone services would emerge in more cities. 

The large number of delivery workers and the irresistible trends of automation, digitalization, and unmanned delivery highlight the necessity to reexamine deskilling and the labor process of delivery workers. 

Nature of deskilling

The theory of “deskilling” labor is credited to American economist Harry Braverman. In Braverman’s opinion, the scientific management method proposed by American mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor is about concentrating scattered craft knowledge among employers, who then distributes the knowledge to workers in the form of detailed manuals, an act dubbed by Braverman as “separation between the conception and execution.” Therefore, “deskilling” essentially separates the conception and execution in the labor process, leading to manual-mental dissociation at work. 

Deskilling implies the degeneration of laborers. As industrial production is being increasingly mechanized and automated, particularly as work is being infinitely divided, some jobs require fewer and fewer skills, making workers part of the production line, instead of complete individuals. Laborers no longer use their brains at work, executing orders like components of machines or as tools. Consequently, they become mentally numb. 

Regarding delivery workers’ labor process, many studies conducted by domestic and foreign scholars have revealed that AI, big data, and algorithms are strengthening internet platforms’ regulatory capacity while weakening workers’ autonomy, ultimately deskilling laborers. As mentioned above, deskilling is in nature about the dissociation between manual labor and the mind, eventually leading to a degradation of workers’ cognitive abilities. However, delivery workers’ performance in reality suggests that this is not true. One of the crucial reasons for this misconception is ignorance of laborers’ use of “tacit knowledge” when they are working.  

Tacit knowledge overlooked

Tacit knowledge is a form of knowledge which is often not expressed verbally and is very difficult to formulize. For many years, little attention has been paid to laborers’ tacit knowledge, but it plays a significant role in their work. Tacit knowledge is superior to technical expertise in that it is linked to specific scenarios, rather than universal conditions. Thus, it can empower workers to identify causes for concrete problems in the labor process and find solutions to them more quickly.

This feature of tacit knowledge, in addition to its inseparability from human intuition and judgment, determines that delivery workers’ labor processes cannot be simplified as rules, regulations, or formulas, as defined by a scientific management system. The process of using tacit knowledge is exactly a process which integrates manual labor and the mind, so delivery cannot deskill the workers. Instead, they can grow and learn while doing so.

Simply put, the tacit knowledge of delivery workers is manifested in their brain map, situational experience, and communication skills. 

In terms of their mental map, most delivery workers would transition from completely following delivery paths recommended by internet platforms, to flexible, independent course charting. In the early days of delivery workers’ career, due to unfamiliarity with delivery procedures, areas, and timing, they must perform their work according to the recommended paths. Once they become familiar with related routes, they will use their own mental map as they know how to plan delivery paths more reasonably to enhance efficiency. 

With regard to situational experience, delivery workers can make rational judgments in reaction to specific circumstances as they continually interact with people and objects in the labor process, thus accumulating myriad experience for typical situations. This situational knowledge, like their brain map and communication skills to be mentioned below, plays a key role, though it cannot be articulated.  

Delivery workers need to hone strong communication skills, as communication is often the most important part of their labor process. Since contact with businesses, customers, and security guards at the gates of supermarkets and residential communities is unavoidable, good communication not only improves delivery efficiency, but it also rewards the workers with positive feedback about their service. 

Therefore, from the perspective of using tacit knowledge in the labor process, or the need for manual-mental integration at work, delivery is not deskilling the workers. Effective communication with businesses, security guards, and customers; mental mapping of delivery paths; and situational experience needed for pick-up, delivery, and other links in the chain, all require workers to coordinate their hands and mind and leverage the tacit knowledge they are accumulating at work. Their cognitive capacities show no sign of degradation. 

Factories fall out of favor

While workers swamp internet platforms, traditional manufacturing is suffering from a labor shortage. During the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 2022, Zhang Xinghai, an NPC deputy and chairman of the automaker Xiaokang Group, pointed out that in recent years, sectors such as delivery, e-commerce, and online live-streaming have attracted large numbers of young employees. The  delivery industry even entices highly educated youths with a master’s degree or above. Factory work has fallen into disfavor among young people, which has exacerbated the problem of industrial hollowing. 

Wen Xiaoyi, a professor from China University of Labor Relations, noted that young and middle-aged laborers, who constituted the main force of factory production lines in the past, are shifting from offline to online work in an endless stream, bringing about tremendous changes to China’s economic structure and landscape. Previously, working in factories in coastal areas was the first choice for numerous young people to realize their urban dreams, but now, delivering parcels, food, or other things in big cities is becoming a top career option. 

Most studies attribute the change in young people’s choices to the high wages paid by internet platforms and stringent management of traditional manufacturing. Data shows that most factory workers in China’s coastal areas earn a monthly income of 4,000–8,000 yuan, roughly 550–1,100 US dollars. In comparison,  delivery workers can earn 7,000 to 8,000 yuan per month, sometimes even more than 10,000 yuan. 

More importantly, delivery workers are subject to less control. Their labor is freer and if they manage their schedules effectively, they can even find time to rest. Apart from differences in remuneration and managerial models, one reason for the shift from factories to delivery work that has been neglected is that delivery workers are not deskilled as compared to factory workers. They need to use both their hands and mind in the labor process. 

“Detail laborers,” a term coined by Karl Marx, might be the prototype for deskilling. These laborers “all their life perform one and the same simple operation, convert their whole body into the automatic, specialized implement of that operation,” Marx writes in his magnum opus Capital. 

The assembly line, invented by Henry Ford, indicates more directly that modern factories no longer need laborers’ “whole body,” but need them to serve as “specialized implements.” The design principle for Ford’s assembly line arranges tools and people by working procedures so that the assembly of components and parts can be completed within the shortest time possible. Here, humans are reduced to an existence similar to tools on the assembly line. Therefore, assembly line workers inevitably suffer from a manual-mental separation, and the consequent degradation of their cognitive abilities. 

When differentiating humans from animals, Marx said, “conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life,” as stated in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Now that humans differ from animals in that humans can engage in free, conscious activity, the difference between humans and tools lies more in humanity’s valuable cognitive and creative capacities. 

Compared to work on the production line, which will dull workers’ senses, people are more willing to do delivery jobs exactly because humans by nature hope to utilize both their hands and mind at work. Due to the existence of tacit knowledge, delivery is more likely to give workers the feeling that they are “complete workers,” rather than “specialized implements.” This is probably why delivery workers feel they enjoy more freedom in the labor process. 

Although delivery workers don’t face the predicament of deskilling, undeniably, many of them are not highly educated or have no advanced skills. The abovementioned Ninth National Workforce Survey shows that most delivery workers held a high school degree or lower. According to a report on delivery workers registered on Meituan during the COVID-19 epidemic, major sources of delivery workers include factory workers, salespersons, entrepreneurs or small business owners, and restaurant practitioners, who were probably low-skilled laborers. In the AI era, how to guide more people to accumulate tacit knowledge and engage in free, conscious labor to realize the synergistic development of humans and machines is a key issue.  

Chen Long is an associate professor from the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University. 

Edited by CHEN MIRONG