How Does the Local State Mediate the Relationship between Technological Change and Work? Evidence from Warehousing in England

The debate on technology and the future of work has so far engaged little with the local state. This is surprising, since the local state’s role as a potentially progressive actor in employment relations systems is attracting interest in sociological scholarship. Through a study of warehousing in Yorkshire, England, we examine how local state actors mediated the relationship between technological change and work. We show that they often questioned the policy orthodoxy that private employer-led technological innovation always benefitted local populations, and identify engagement, advocacy, and conditionality strategies through which these actors sought to respond to technological trajectories in warehousing workplaces. However, our study also shows how the opacity of technological innovation in warehousing limited local states’ regulatory capacity.