AIBU to think that the BBC and other news outlets are reporting that the lack of lorry drivers and care workers is caused by Covid alone and that they are deliberately ignoring Brexit?

[Aurorashields99]

And if you agree, why do you think this is the case? Surely Brexit is as much to blame for these issues so why are they not reporting this fairly?

I must have watched half a dozen news stories over the past few days in which reporters only mention Covid as being the cause of empty shelves in the supermarket and the shortage of care workers. If Brexit is referred to at all, it is only mentioned fleetingly.

Of course Covid has had a heavy impact on these sectors too but it's not the only factor is it? So why is Brexit being ignored?

I am not a journalist or a troll. I have been a member of Mumsnet since 2003.

And yes I know there is a Brexit topic elsewhere but (a) I am interested in people's votes and (b) not being able to discuss this in AIBU and confining this thread to the Brexit topic is the perfect example of the issue I am complaining about here.

And it is allowing Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to cover their tracks and not to have to face the consequences of their actions. Covid is providing the perfect cover for them both.

Why aren't reporters doing their job and reporting the facts fairly? Why is Brexit being swept under the rug? Is it because Johnson and Gove were former journalists themselves and know how to spin events in their favour?

Or is Brexit a dirty word now even though we are all living with consequences?

Shortages are worse in the EU. M&s closed shops in France due to no delivery. yeah cos they can't get the products from the uk. One UK firm having trouble with supplies to the continent isn't shortages across the eu
I live in Spain and there have been no supply issues since the beginning of the pandemic.
I can get seen quickly at the doctor too, probably cos a lot of Spanish health care workers have come home after brexit.

I think it is a combination of things. There was a discussion on local radio only the other week on this issue. Some of the points he made were that 30000 have tests were cancelled last year due to COVID restrictions and 100000 have lessons didn’t take place again due to COVID restrictions and with brexit that can’t now raid another EU country of their drivers instead.
It was also said they had lost uk drivers who had had enough of working flat out during the pandemic for poor wages and even worse conditions. These were the people they were trying to tempt back with signing on bonuses and better pay.

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun

Shortages are worse in the EU. M&s closed shops in France due to no delivery. yeah cos they can't get the products from the uk. One UK firm having trouble with supplies to the continent isn't shortages across the eu I live in Spain and there have been no supply issues since the beginning of the pandemic. I can get seen quickly at the doctor too, probably cos a lot of Spanish health care workers have come home after brexit.

Glad you can see a doctor. I can’t. Not because they are not there as they are but they are only offering telephone consultations.

Glad you can see a doctor. I can’t. Not because they are not there as they are but they are only offering telephone consultations.

Compared with other EU countries, the UK has far fewer doctors per 10,000 population. The UK has 28 doctors per 10,000 - Germany 40 and Austria over 50. So one of the key issues is that even though UK doctors are there (as in "they are in the surgery") there are still too few of them.

Note too that these figures are from a year or two ago. As OrangeBlossomsinthesun writes above with regards to Spain, healthcare workers, including doctors, are leaving the UK and returning to the EU.

My good friend was a gp in London, and her dh was also in a medical field here. Both Spanish nationals. They left the UK due to brexit and work oversees now.

I think it’s the same with EU lorry drivers.

Overseas even…

Enb76

Your post about the facebook truck drive4 is exactly what my friends hgv lorry driver told me

I think the biggest issue is the sheer number of vacancies in hospitality, retail, care, driving etc (not just in the UK but other countries are experiencing similar)

This means is an employee's market.

Employees can be more choosy and of course they will look for better pay, benefits, hours etc.

Employers don't want to offer this, then put the blame elsewhere when they can't recruit

I think calling anyone stupid in the basis that they voted for Brexit is wrong. But anyone who still thinks Brexit was the right choice, after seeing this, really is stupid.

I think the biggest issue is the sheer number of vacancies in hospitality, retail, care, driving etc (not just in the UK but other countries are experiencing similar)

... and what is the cause of the vacancies? A combination of years of under investment, poor working conditions, Brexit and Covid.

Other countries in the EU are not experiencing similar shortages to anything like the extent that they are being seen in the UK. They too have been affected by Covid, but of course, not (negatively) by Brexit.

@TheNatureOfTheCatastrophe

Don't get me wrong - I think this government are an incompetent shower. But the Labour Party are making such a hash of it that everything's gone topsy turvy.

I quite agree. The Labour party has a death wish. We're now stuck with voting for the party/PM we dislike the least. Just like how the US has ended up.

We have lots of long term MPs who are genuinely good/able MPs in their local constituencies who get nowhere near ministerial office, even as junior ministers. Yet, in both parties, we also get people parachuted in from nowhere to safe seats who get onto the front bench in just a few years. The whole thing, both parties, is a sham. Both parties have people outside Parliament pulling their strings.

@listentomydeclaration

I think the biggest issue is the sheer number of vacancies in hospitality, retail, care, driving etc (not just in the UK but other countries are experiencing similar)

This means is an employee's market.

Employees can be more choosy and of course they will look for better pay, benefits, hours etc.

Employers don't want to offer this, then put the blame elsewhere when they can't recruit

But one of the main reasons that jobs in those industries aren't attractive is the working hours, i.e. long hours or unsocial hours. Pay isn't the only factor in play. Lots of people simply don't want to work evenings, weekends, etc which is a bit of a problem for hospitality in particular. Every job has a limit as to how much it's worth. There obviously is some slack in the system for slight wage increases, but someone not wanting an evening/weekend job won't work for £12 per hour just like they won't work for £10 or £8 per hour if they have reasons for not wanting those hours, (i.e. family, caring, commitments, hobbies, etc).

The unpopularity of the shifts is fixable though if you give people stable rotas. Saturday evenings won't work for some people at any price, but other people will find them very doable for the right wage - either because their partner is at home and they don't need childcare or because it tops up their weekday job. The problem lies with employers trying to hire people with total flexibility on alleged zero hour contracts then penalising employees for not taking up certain shifts.

No shortages here in Portugal.

James O'Brien had an interesting discussion on LBC recently, discussing the conundrum of falling unemployment and rising job vacancies in the UK. In short, there simply aren't enough people to meet demand now that the UK doesn't have access to the European work force.

Even if pay and conditions were drastically improved in (say) the care industry to attract more staff, those people will be leaving other jobs (in cleaning or nursing, for example) and then you have a shortage of cleaners and nurses. In the haulage, food and hospitality industries, prices will have to rise and this will be passed to the consumer.

The only possible solution is to encourage school leavers to go into apprenticeships and jobs rather than expensive (and often irrelevant) third level education. But this will take years and need a culture change - neither of which is what the UK has the time or appetite for.

Ho hum.

We are used to supply chains of goods and services being a well oiled machine. If one or two parts of the machine start to chafe and grind, the whole machine slows down.

We have previously taken for granted how lucky we are to have the range of store produce we have had. Times are evolving, due to Brexit, Covid and now climate change is starting to have an effect. It may never go back to how it was. But the shelves are not 'all empty for weeks' and while there are currently supply issues, a limited shelf in the Co-op this morning will be full tomorrow and on Monday the meat section at Sainsbury's will be low, but there is meat there this afternoon. The local butcher could be well-stocked and the farm shop too.

There are multiple factors as to why there are supply issues. Each factor has multiple drill down factors also. EU delivery drivers and bricklayers took the £50k bounce back loan, went home and put a deposit on a flat in Bucharest. Meanwhile eastern european economies are doing well so why not stay a while and work out where to go, start the next chapter, while the UK comes to terms with Brexit. South America has been badly affected with Covid and port workers are at the front line. Some have long Covid and lost husbands, wives and siblings. The life expectancy in Africa is 61, Covid is comparatively lower but is higher in far east where ships crews will be affected and will be delayed getting to Mombasa. Shipping is affected due to typhoons and hurricanes, which also affect oil production in some seas which goes to make other products such as packaging in the supply chain.

If choice is not as plentiful, we may have to get used to this new normal, but I am not going to get concerned about it. We are in a far different place than the 1970's and we will adapt.

I think it is due to a combination of factors, not least of which is that industry pay and conditions are piss poor. The warehouse storesman where I work chats to all the drivers and they are telling him that it's the appalling wages combined with working hours on offer that's causing a lot of the staff shortages.

Who did those unpopular shifts and jobs British people didn't want to do? EU nationals that's who. And now they have gone home in large numbers because of Brexit.
I agree that the uk needs an overhaul to make those jobs more attractive, like decent apprenticeships and so on.
Spain has a better system of Vocational education that it is currently revamping and massively investing in, making those kinds of careers more attractive.

Who did those unpopular shifts and jobs British people didn't want to do? EU nationals that's who. And now they have gone home in large numbers because of Brexit.

This is a very large part of the current issue - and as the OP suggested, one that is being played down by the government and the media. No economy can lose hundreds of thousands of workers almost overnight and not be impacted.

As well as the EU citizens who have returned home in their hundreds of thousands, many have taken their British spouses with them (as they had to be resident in the EU before 31st December in order to smooth the change of status from EU citizens to "non-EU but allowed to stay in EU" status.

My own company relocated to the EU in 2019 and most of our European staff also returned to their home countries, but continued to work for the company by working from home (and this was before Covid). Off the top of my head, their British spouses included an HGV mechanic, an couple of IT experts, and a nurse - all of whom now work in the EU. In my new location (a small rural town) I have likewise met a number of British people who have relocated as their EU partners have not wanted to remain in the UK. One guy is a mechanic, another a graphic designer, another is a driver and one is a skilled cabinet maker. All have easily found work.

My husband is a lorry driver and this is far from unique to the Uk. For years he has been showing me YouTube videos made by his counterparts in USA who have been experiencing driver shortages for a long time and it has driven up lorry driver salaries to around $100k pa and drivers have been going there for the wages. It is also happening in Poland and many other counties.

Brexit is only getting the blame here because it has peeled back the mask that driver wages here have been driven down for the last 15-20 years to minimum wage by the cheap foreign labour. It is not a fair wage considering the sheer personal sacrifice and cost to do the job such as paying for parking, eating at a premium and maintaining qualifications.

The wages drivers are starting to get now are only back up to around what they were 20 years ago and that is the real tragedy that most people can’t see it.
People really don’t give a thought to what drivers go through to get goods on the shelves and that was never so apparent as how they were treated during the pandemic.

I’m glad to see that they are now getting a fairer wage and I hope the better working conditions comes with it. I could write a book on the stories I hear of what happens to these people on the road

The other thing that could be done to help fill in the more casual end of job shortages is to make the benefit system quicker and more flexible. Zero hours contracts are currently an appallingly bad fit with UC. If you're going to switch to an online benefits system then it should be able to top up wages on a live weekly basis.

Imagine a job where:
You fork out £3k to £5k to get qualifications from your own money no student loans.
Go through a medical and eye test at your own expense not refunded by employer.
Do a CPC course every year at own expense.
Pay DVLA at own expense to carry 3 cards- a licence card, driver qualification card and digital tachograph card. You can’t work til these are issues and we all know how DVLA love to piss about.
On the road treated like shit by fellow drivers who really don’t know how to give a lorry room.
Stress of being aware of these loons, stuck in traffic and trying to find places avoiding low bridges and weight restriction.
Being responsible for a load which has been packed by a warehouse person often completely wrong and unsafe
Stuck at loading bays by companies holding you up and leaving you short on time to get to destination
Routes planned by a transport operative completely wrong and not leaving enough time to reach destination within legal driving hours. Trying to find a suitable place to park when the service stations are full and ending up in a lay-by with noisy traffic passing that makes the cab shake all the time = no sleep and no shower or toilet.
Getting a space in a service station and paying £35 for the pleasure. Really stinking showers and toilets and eating an inflated Burger King price just to get a hot meal.
Working 60-70 hours a week and sleeping in a smelly cab away from home and family.
Having no luck finding somewhere to park and going a few minutes over driver hours leading to licence infringements and VOSA taking you to court costing you £900 in fines paid from your own wages ( which are £9 per hour)
Getting your holidays and then in pay packet finding it is £100 less than normal because your employer claims part of your wages as a taxable night out or meal allowance which you can’t avail of on your holidays.
Entering a pandemic delivering toilet rolls to the country only to be illegally denied access to toilets and hand washing by the entire country.
Peeing in a hedge.
Risking life and limb on the roads.
Coming to end of week to go home and boss telling you no you have to do another run.
Paying for another medical every renewal and struggling to get a GP appointment to do it.
Job insecurity.
Health problems of poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.
Mental problems of being bloody lonely.
Not able to deal with family emergencies.

Sounds great for minimum wage doesn’t it. Who on MN is signing up for £9 per hour?
It’s actually disgusting that people think this is acceptable for either or workers or foreign workers and then moan about Brexit being the cause of people not doing this job.

@Aurorashields99

I thought the government had given the go-ahead to extending the already long hours of lorry drivers?

After reading the above do you really think there is a lorry driver in the country who WANTS to do extra hours????

The extension is only something like allowing them to drive 10 hours a day instead of 9 for the few days a week where they haven’t already been permitted to do so. They are already allowed to work an extra hour twice a week.

Blubberyboo. Excellent post.

And don’t forget people who want the shops fully stocked and all their deliveries to arrive complaining because HGVs have the audacity to drive down their road or park somewhere (perfectly legally) near their house.

And the fear that while your sleeping someone will try to steal your load.

And the poor families ar home worrying about which idiots they may come across on the roads or while sleeping

If Boris reverses the EU cheap labour market then existing Uk drivers will start migrating to USA where they are being head hunted for better wages. They were already starting to move there before covid and Brexit

The UK needs to pay drivers and seriously improve working conditions and parking facilities. Not mask it with cheap slave labour

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-trucking-crisis-has-the-u-s-looking-for-more-drivers-abroad

After reading the above do you really think there is a lorry driver in the country who WANTS to do extra hours????

Of course not Blubberyboo! I wasn't saying it was a good thing!