Grocery Delivery Workers Project - Incite at Columbia University

Completed Project

Grocery Delivery Workers Project

  • Led by Columbia Labor Lab
  • Team
    • Adam Reich Principal Investigator
    • Ruth Milkman Co-Investigator
    • Suresh Naidu Co-Investigator
    • Luke Elliott-Negri
    • Kathleen Griesbach
    • Sam Lutzker
  • Timeframe 2017–2019
  • Funded by United Food and Commercial Workers

The Grocery Delivery Workers Project was a mixed methods study of the expanding grocery delivery industry.

Making use of sales data, online customer reviews, worker reviews, surveys, and interviews with delivery workers, the project sought to explore a variety of pertinent questions about the grocery delivery industry, including:

  • What is the composition of the grocery delivery workforce?
  • What is the nature of grocery delivery work?
  • Relatedly, how do workers respond to unfairness at work?

Using natural language processing methods, the project also to explored the discursive trends across online reviews of grocery delivery companies.

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