To think that if the hospitality industry is struggling to fill vacancies...

[Susie477]

It should pay higher wages?

The hospitality industry is facing a ‘jobs crisis’, we are told. Restaurants are complaining that they can’t recruit the workers they need to re-open after lockdown. Many of the foreign workers they previously relied on have gone home after Brexit & covid, and they are struggling to recruit British workers to do minimum wage jobs with unsocial working hours.

So why not offer to pay more? Businesses accept that they have to pay competitively to recruit senior executives and justify high salaries by citing ‘market forces’. Why doesn’t the same apply to ordinary workers?

One of the alleged benefits of Brexit was supposed to be that the U.K. economy would be forced to break its addiction to an unlimited supply of cheap immigrant labour. So why isn’t it happening? Why aren’t wages rising?

@DdraigGoch

When I worked in hospitality and tourism-based jobs, I wasn't too worried about the poor wages. They were very low but at least you knew where you stood and could budget around it. What I did worry about however was the lack of security. When it got to November and I was down to working just one day a week was always stressful. For this reason I worked flat out whenever the opportunity arose. Not ideal. Zero-hours seasonal work is great for students and school kids after pin money but not for earning a living. With this in mind, one of the best things the government could do would be to stagger the school holidays around the country to spread out the peak season. Not much can be done about the miserable winter weather though.

Great idea about staggering school summer holidays in the UK. They could have done with doing that this year where many more families will be looking to book a UK based holiday. English families are going to be fighting over the same 6 weeks.

If you think about it WCT is helping to full low wages.
If people couldn't afford to live with low wages they'd look for another employer and move jobs for 50p per hour more.
But if your wage is topped up by tax credits, moving for 50p doesn't make sense because all you're doing is reducing the tax credits not improving your standard of living.

We have go ourselves into a mess as it's not going to be easy moving away from it.

I don't feel much sympathy for the hospitality industry after working in it for 20 years. Such a bad working culture in restaurants and bars. You lose your in life working in this industry. Min wage, long shifts, split shifts (with no where to go between other than be at work and not be paid), no weekends or Christmas period/bank hols. No guarantee of work/zero hours. Employers regularly flout employment law such as not giving you the minimum 11 hours between shifts. Tips are all pooled and then taxed and some places use it to make your wage. Trouble is these working conditions are so bad there's a bullying culture and often mysogynistic culture in many places, it's terrible. It's also hard physical work standing up for 12 hours basically doing repetitive work and putting up with the public treating you like and. Also dealing with this awful British drinking culture - yuk! Staff should never have been treated this way from whatever country they come from. I did work with a lot of people who came from the EU to work and tolerated it because it was temporary solution for them and had property/ family to go back to so were happy to be living at a pub or hotel for a short period. I'm very pro EU because I made a lot of friends this way and I like working with people from different backgrounds. However this does drive standards down and is advantageous to government/capitalism

Do people realise fewer and fewer people are on tax credits and no one is who filed a claim since December, 2018, when all councils became fully Universal Credit? UC is far less generous and as your child ages you are required to work more hours.

It could be a perfect storm for the hospitality industry. Personally I've saved a small fortune over lockdown/Covid and I'm simply not going back to wasting money on rediculously over priced food and drink or paying £11.50 for a cup of coffee and a sarnie. I've got a lovely garden and summer house where I can relax with my friends for a fraction of the price of a good wine from Sainsburys or grab something to eat in our canteen where coffee is £1.20.

@boredbuttercup

I agree that the perks of a hospitality job are what make it, not the wages.

what perks exactly? The last hospitality job I had didn't even include a staff meal. Sure we got staff discount of 50% but this didn't apply to happy hour and it was at the time of eat out to help out, so we were paying exactly the same as the general public. There was 0 perks for minimum wage, 12+ hour shifts, and dealing with frankly awful customers with incredibly levels of entitlement. I got my shifts on a Thursday or Friday for the next week starting Monday so had no time to plan, completely changing hours, some weeks 12, some weeks 50, absolutely no consistency, it was shit. Or should I just 'buck up' and accept it so you can eat for cheap?

I also think many young workers need to buck up their ideas.

Of course you think the youngsters need to buck up, but you're not willing to go take these jobs with shitty wages and no perks yourself, because you're better than that but the young have to put up with shit

We all had to put up with shit when we were young. I worked 3 jobs and banked money. It's a learning process, pulls you up by your bootstraps and makes you strive for better.

We all had to put up with shit when we were young. I worked 3 jobs and banked money. It's a learning process, pulls you up by your bootstraps and makes you strive for better.

So you seriously think people should just put up with shit rather than demand better, which they work for by the way, not just sitting on their arse guess what, there's more jobs than there are workers right now, that means those jobs are going to have to compete for the workers, even more so for the good workers. Therefore they're going to have to make themselves more attractive with better pay/conditions. It's simple supply and demand.

There's nothing wrong with people demanding better, it's how we make progress. One time there was no holiday pay, or sick pay, or maternity, and people demanded better. And I bet the older people who worked without these things Also told them to 'buck up', but guess what, companies had to offer better to attract good workers, and now these things are standard. I think fair wages and decent working conditions should be standard too.

It’s not just “ the young” that work in hospitality, it’s mums and dads, 30s and 40 year old and older

Those talking about the good old days of high wages and perks in hospitality - that must have been rare surely? Hardly anyone ate out, and certainly not regularly. Pub jobs were always fairly low paid.

I worked in various hospitality/Saturday jobs as a sixth former and student. I got £3 odd an hour in the late 1990s. I had a Saturday job at 15 where I got £12 for the whole day - 8:30 - 5:30! I was happy as a pig in muck with earning my own wages.

I remember a job in a hospital when I was a student paying £6.20 per hour and I thought that was amazing. This would have been about 2002!

@boredbuttercup

We all had to put up with shit when we were young. I worked 3 jobs and banked money. It's a learning process, pulls you up by your bootstraps and makes you strive for better.

So you seriously think people should just put up with shit rather than demand better, which they work for by the way, not just sitting on their arse guess what, there's more jobs than there are workers right now, that means those jobs are going to have to compete for the workers, even more so for the good workers. Therefore they're going to have to make themselves more attractive with better pay/conditions. It's simple supply and demand.

There's nothing wrong with people demanding better, it's how we make progress. One time there was no holiday pay, or sick pay, or maternity, and people demanded better. And I bet the older people who worked without these things Also told them to 'buck up', but guess what, companies had to offer better to attract good workers, and now these things are standard. I think fair wages and decent working conditions should be standard too.

There is no better! Have you ever run a business? It is unrealistic to expect small business owners to pay very high wages for low skill jobs. There is no profit in it, prices would have to rise (from the factory supplying the food upwards) and before you know it you are back in the 1970s and high inflation.

At least int he UK we pay a living wage. Try working in a bar or restaurant in Spain or Greece. You get a very, very basic wage (if you are lucky) and the rest is made up of tips. No minimum wage. Some bars are tips only and the waiter 'rents' a group of tables and chairs. The cost of the drinks is taken by the bar owner, anything else is the wages.

@DdraigGoch

When I worked in hospitality and tourism-based jobs, I wasn't too worried about the poor wages. They were very low but at least you knew where you stood and could budget around it. What I did worry about however was the lack of security. When it got to November and I was down to working just one day a week was always stressful. For this reason I worked flat out whenever the opportunity arose. Not ideal. Zero-hours seasonal work is great for students and school kids after pin money but not for earning a living. With this in mind, one of the best things the government could do would be to stagger the school holidays around the country to spread out the peak season. Not much can be done about the miserable winter weather though.

If it's anything like the time when I did it between one fulltime job ending and the next starting, the pay might have been low (£120 a week), but my rent on a two bedroomed flat was £55 - which the bank told me was more expensive than a mortgage, as the average price of a two bed terrace in my part of London was £36-42K.

Youngsters don't need to buck anything up of they can get a job with better pay and conditions. No-one is obliged to work in any particular industry, they need to be persuaded, that's how the labour market works. If hospitality venues aren't persuading enough of them to work for them with their current offering, they need to up their offering. Likewise no-one is entitled to a cheap meal and coffee out, if prices HAVE to rise to pay wages at the market rate, you either pay the required price or go without. Yes businesses will close, but if they can only survive by paying poverty wages, when there's jobs available in other industries with better pay and conditions, they aren't a viable business anyway.

@HangingOver

I saw a young woman post on a jobs board earlier that she was looking for a job and had done a bit of bar work in the past. She got 115 replies from shops, cafes, hotels and restaurants. The problem here is there's a housing crisis, none of the seasonal workers have anywhere to live so no one can come into the area for the summer rush. People are camping in tents to be able to do the season.

I hope she responded with “could you all please PM me with your best wage offer and I’ll make a decision.”

@ejhhhhh

Youngsters don't need to buck anything up of they can get a job with better pay and conditions. No-one is obliged to work in any particular industry, they need to be persuaded, that's how the labour market works. If hospitality venues aren't persuading enough of them to work for them with their current offering, they need to up their offering. Likewise no-one is entitled to a cheap meal and coffee out, if prices HAVE to rise to pay wages at the market rate, you either pay the required price or go without. Yes businesses will close, but if they can only survive by paying poverty wages, when there's jobs available in other industries with better pay and conditions, they aren't a viable business anyway.

Totally agree with this.

The businesses DS worked for that were shit and paid low wages had high turnover of staff and never had enough (which caused more problems for the staff, and loads of customer complaints.

One of the family run businesses he worked for, just Saturday, 9 - 5, for £9.50 an hour, age 16 - 18, had very low staff turnover and a lovely working culture, with very happy customers. They have been in business since 1870 so I think they know what they are doing...

@BungleandGeorge
Waitressing is my second job so every penny earned is taxed at 20%

@osbertthesyrianhamster

Do people realise fewer and fewer people are on tax credits and no one is who filed a claim since December, 2018, when all councils became fully Universal Credit? UC is far less generous and as your child ages you are required to work more hours.

Lovely isn't? Welcome to Tory Britain.

Low wages and shit benefits.

@boredbuttercup

We all had to put up with shit when we were young. I worked 3 jobs and banked money. It's a learning process, pulls you up by your bootstraps and makes you strive for better.

So you seriously think people should just put up with shit rather than demand better, which they work for by the way, not just sitting on their arse guess what, there's more jobs than there are workers right now, that means those jobs are going to have to compete for the workers, even more so for the good workers. Therefore they're going to have to make themselves more attractive with better pay/conditions. It's simple supply and demand.

There's nothing wrong with people demanding better, it's how we make progress. One time there was no holiday pay, or sick pay, or maternity, and people demanded better. And I bet the older people who worked without these things Also told them to 'buck up', but guess what, companies had to offer better to attract good workers, and now these things are standard. I think fair wages and decent working conditions should be standard too.

100%

'Oh, I had it bad so you should, too!' What a shitty attitude. My dad was born during the Depression. He grew up really poor. He said it sucked. There was nothing 'character building' about it, he said it was grindingly awful and cost many lives and he was so glad we don't live in those times anymore (he said the same thing about WWII, which he was old enough to remember).

Low wages and shit benefits
But as long as people can have their cheap pizza and have Nandos regularly then who cares? Customers paying more, people eating out less regularly is the height of unreasonable behaviour according to some.

It's not surprising though. On any thread about workplace conditions there are always people pushing a rush to the bottom: know your place and stop wanting better, some of us only get 10 minutes break all day because we get busy at work, but we are grateful to have a job. Go lick your manager's boots and tell them that you're ever so grateful to be employed. I suck it up, so you should too.

No wonder people vote for the likes of Boris and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

osbertthesyrianhamster
My gran said the same. She doesn't understand some of the "I had it shit so you should too" attitudes. Her view was if all the post war adults had lived the life she had, and seen what she had seen then they'd not be so quick to kick others down.

We all had to put up with shit when we were young. I worked 3 jobs and banked money. It's a learning process, pulls you up by your bootstraps and makes you strive for better.

🙄

*There is no better! Have you ever run a business? It is unrealistic to expect small business owners to pay very high wages for low skill jobs. There is no profit in it, prices would have to rise (from the factory supplying the food upwards) and before you know it you are back in the 1970s and high inflation.

At least int he UK we pay a living wage. Try working in a bar or restaurant in Spain or Greece. You get a very, very basic wage (if you are lucky) and the rest is made up of tips. No minimum wage. Some bars are tips only and the waiter 'rents' a group of tables and chairs. The cost of the drinks is taken by the bar owner, anything else is the wages.*

Well if they can't profit then they're just going to have to close down as the business isn't viable. This is about hospitality places being unable to find workers because they aren't paying enough. You're not going to sweet talk people into taking low pay by saying 'but this business will close if you don't work here' when they have the option of going and working somewhere else for better pay and better conditions. It's simple supply and demand. There's more demand for workers than there is supply, therefore the workers can be picky about where they go and will choose the most attractive places based on pay/conditions/work. I don't care if the pub down the road closes because i refuse to work there for a pittance, when the call centre will pay me more for easier work and nicer conditions and treatment, my labour isn't charity, no one's is.

There may be a living wage in the UK but that doesn't mean everywhere pays it, it's simply a recommendation. Most places pay NMW which is not enough to actually live on so people choose to do jobs which pay better. And talk about a race to the bottom with the whole 'be thankful you're not in spain or greece '. It's not about that, and if you think it is you've really missed the point of this entire thread. Which is - hospitality jobs just aren't attractive anymore so are struggling to get staff. If they want staff they're going to have to offer more attractive jobs whether that be better pay/consistent hours/more perks or they won't have enough staff to open at all. And you can't guilt people into taking the unattractive work by saying 'they'll close down otherwise' as no one labour is charity and we all have free choice to choose where we work.

It is unrealistic to expect small business owners to pay very high wages for low skill jobs.

Maybe put that on the job adverts

I think a lot of people who did evenings and weekends in hospitality have found spending time in unsocial hours with their family was really nice and have tried to move to jobs that give them that time.
My Ds cooks in a restaurant at the moment, he's still training in college too. He even said spending weekends with his partner ahs been wonderful. They are now back to only seeing each other a few evening a week and mornings on the weekend.
I'm in a nursing home, we have had a lot of young people join us during covid. One is a hairdresser, she had rent to pay. She likes it so much she's going to do hairdressing as a side line.
However we can't get anyone to join us as an RN, we need one more nurse. Even advertising £22 an hour gets no one.

The best is when everyone around you works similar hospitality. They you all have similar nonweekend weeekends and party and dine cheaper on weekday deals😂
Also works for weekday weddings.

Silver linings, innit

Brexshit.

They were very low but at least you knew where you stood and could budget around it.

There is no way you can budget around a zero hours contract and what’s worse is the benefits have to fluctuate and don’t keep up, so you end up with 12 council tax bills as it keeps changing