I honestly think it is a mixed bag. In the US at least, the mom & pop shops have been largely killed by the big box chains like Walmart, Kmart & Target -- those type of family run, multi-generational businesses have been gone for a long time now. Is working at an AMZ warehouse that much worse than working at Walmart? I don't know, it might be.
On the other hand Amazon has built a model that allows small businesses to piggyback on their success, something that the big box chains did not do. Though different and larger, the Amazon market place sort of reminds me of how Google tapped into webmasters by developing Adsense.
Perhaps the situation in the UK is a little different?