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?

@ivykaty44

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

That was precisely the point I was making in my full post. You could live with the hourly rate if only you could be certain of working full time. Seventy hours a week in the summer and seven in the autumn.

Some thoughts.

Restaurant prices need to go up, then wages can go up and recruitment will be easy.

In addition the British public need to change their view that the hospitality sector is not a profession but more a stop gap for young people.

I would expect that the majority of staff had not been in their current job long enough to qualify for furlough as staff turnover in bars and restaurants run very high.

I can not imagine the furlough scheme would have accounted for service charge which often makes up the bulk of the wage so many might have changed jobs rather than accepted furlough.

Ask yourself if you would go to a restaurant that, for example, charges £35 for a basic pizza because that is what it would cost to pay staff fairly.

When the minimum wage for hospitality workers is a living wage and the contracts are not based on zero hours then they will be able to recruit. It starts will the customer though.

I haven't rtft but I spent years working in hospitality. I could suck up working for minimum wage but I can't find a job anymore where its not a requirement to work at the weekends, or every Sunday for lunch etc no one offers set shifts either. I've turned down countless hospitality jobs in the last 2 months because they're all rota work which is no good for families with small children

@ThankGodForChocolate

I haven't rtft but I spent years working in hospitality. I could suck up working for minimum wage but I can't find a job anymore where its not a requirement to work at the weekends, or every Sunday for lunch etc no one offers set shifts either. I've turned down countless hospitality jobs in the last 2 months because they're all rota work which is no good for families with small children

Unfortunately that's often the need of the business though. Because paydays are different times, bank holidays, special days, events in the city etc affect the how busy the place gets. Generally it's busiest at weekends, hence why staff has to work at least part.

Small cafes in business areas often do just weekdays so if you have anything like that close by, have a look it might be worth it

Just to add we used to have very part time just for couple of lunches over the week when some of the part timers weren't available. Few small places around did so eventually you will get lucky and hit some like that.

@Miasicarisatia

Restaurants closing would be a good thing, obesity levels would drop

Of course they would. Because no supermarket sells high calorie, unhealthy food. 🙄

@jasjas1973

Even though the WTD stipulates eleven hours mandatory rest between shifts, I remember working in hotel restaurants where Polish workers from an agency would be minibused in half an hour each way and then go on to work 16 hour days, six days a week. That's a 96 hour week, plus the travelling time. Not legal to have so little rest and they were like zombies, struggling to stay awake. If they hadn't been willing to work in such conditions, the hotel would have been forced to improve the lot of the in-house staff to improve retention

Thats purely down to cuts in govt funding to enforce labour laws.

You should have dobbed them in, those hours are slave working conditions.
You ve no idea if they were willing or not, in any case irrelevant.

They certainly had the ability to turn down work because they did turn down the seventh shift of the week. Some of them were quite chatty.

When I was at school and then as a student in the 70s I worked in bars and restaurants. Worked really well for a student, worked 2 or 3 nights a week, others that worked in places like this then were people with carer commitments through the day. So see no reason why we shouldn't revert to that style of employment for the less skilled parts of the hospitality industry.

I'd pay more because I have friends in hospitality and know how hard it is. In fact, some of them are moving on to new careers because running a pub/restaurant is a thankless task that pays very little, especially if you're not a freeholder and are dictated to by the breweries, who have not been particularly helpful to licensees during the pandemic. They could have waived rent and fees etc but didn't.

People can only pay what the business can stand.

Because of social distancing,. restaurants/hotels have reduced customer numbers therefore reduced incomes. So from their POV now is the worst possible time to increase staff pay.

@Coffeeisnecessary

We pay the living wage in our business but we barely break even, would people be willing to pay more for their coffees and cakes to accommodate a pay rise for staff?

It depends on what you're charging currently, but if it is less than the competition, then maybe it's time for a price review?

Not sure what the end result would be, but shows the knock-on effect of major socio-economic change

And if we are to 'build back better', that change can't come soon enough.

What happens if the business can't afford to pay enough to attract workers though? The business isn't viable so they close, no one is obliged to work for whatever the business deems affordable. If the local cafe can only offer a zero hours contracts at NMW, whereas the call center in town is offering set hours at £9 an hour, workers won't work at the café like it's some sort of charity. If lots of businesses aren't viable any more, they'll close.

There's an element of truth in all of these, but it is, in part "payback" from the kind of mouthbreather who voted for Brexit because "they didn't like hearing forrin [sic]" in Aldi and who is now wondering why the wheels are falling off the economy. Yes, if they paid more for staff, it might tempt some people into working/make it actually worth it, but I suspect that there's been a business model that has run on starvation wages for too long that will need to change

@ejhhhhh

What happens if the business can't afford to pay enough to attract workers though? The business isn't viable so they close, no one is obliged to work for whatever the business deems affordable. If the local cafe can only offer a zero hours contracts at NMW, whereas the call center in town is offering set hours at £9 an hour, workers won't work at the café like it's some sort of charity. If lots of businesses aren't viable any more, they'll close.

Yes. That sums it up.

Too many non viable businesses being propped up like this and paying shit wages.

It's silly to say it would cost £35 per pizza to pay staff living wage. My local cafe manages it charging perfectly reasonable amounts for lovely, freshly cooked food.

What they don't do is provide a full English for a fiver. It's £8.99. It's a very popular well frequented cafe that has been in business for over 100 years.

I think they will put the wages up. And then their prices

Wh ends up paying? Customers

The day of cheap meals out will be over

Yes Tiffany: cheap because at whose expense? The staff ... it's old fashioned supply and demand. Supply too much, prices fall; demand too much, prices rise ... Low wages (absent a completely shit economy) means a staff shortage, so prices will rise as staff have to be attracted ...in a recession, prices may fall, as wages (costs) may fall too.

One thing I havent seen mentioned is that there is a significant shortage of young people (late teens & early 20s). This graph is interesting. Add to that the numbers of people who have left or not come in because of Brexit. It was inevitable that there would be fewer people in the employment pool.

The casual dining sector was already saturated before Covid hit. Chains were already failing. High costs including cost of debt, business rates & staff plus reduced demand were already taking their toll.

Oooh. Anything significant happened to cause that dip in the population there @GnomeDePlume
That looks interesting!

I don’t disagree with you, as long as people understand that it will mean increased prices for everything to cover the costs

@SchrodingersImmigrant the number of people in their early/mid 40s was significantly reduced. 25 years earlier they had fewer babies. They were born in the early/mid 70s at which point the birth rate was in a steep decline. In 1964 the birth rate per woman was just shy of 3, by 1974 it was just shy of 2. Now it's 1.68.

Fewer people had fewer babies.

I think what is scary is you look how the base of the pyramid is narrowing.

I think what is scary is you look how the base of the pyramid is narrowing.
It will continue to narrow down now people are conscious of the carbon footprint DC use alongside lack of immigration.
It's a pity we've started breeding pets at an alarming rate defeating the purpose, here hoping pets evolve enough to pay taxes.

The birthrate is iineresting. I always wonder how many child free women must be out there with so low rate per woman, but regularly seeing here mentions of 3, 4, 5 kids.

And yes. It is narrowing...

Are some of those population bulges not still related to the Baby boomers Post war generation having children and then grandchildren are the same time?

I don't discount women having fewer babies, that has to be related to the expectation of women returning to work after having babies.
I remember a teacher at school being back at work 6 weeks after having her baby, after I had my own babies I was . That was early 80's.
By the 90s maternity leave improved as it was expected for women to return to work.

But the cost of childcare makes it difficult to have many children.
Women working to 66 means they're are less opportunities for free Granny childcare.
I know a couple of women who retired a couple of years early to provide childcare but it's on thing retiring at 58 and living of savings until you turn 60, it's another stopping at 58 and not getting pension for 8 years.