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‘A thimble of water to a spreading fire’, is what the British business community calls the Johnson government’s plan to get enough turkeys on the British Christmas table through extra temporary work permits.
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The UK government will issue an additional 5,000 visas for foreign truck drivers until Christmas, plus 5,500 visas for poultry workers. The British Transport Secretary announced that Grant Shapps on this weekend.
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London is facing a perfect storm in the labor market. Due to Brexit and the immediately following pandemic, many foreign – especially Eastern European – workers have left for the continent. That bloodletting comes on top of the bottlenecks that the entire Western world is struggling with. A boom in demand as a result of a rapidly reopening economy is running into shortages of personnel – from truckers to bartenders – and parts – from semiconductors to wood.
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British employers scorn the temporary visas. “A thimble to a blazing fire,” says the British Chamber of Commerce in a response. The British Truckers’ Federation notes that visas valid until Christmas are not a real solution.
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At the same time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson calls on British transporters to ‘pay truckers better’ via the Sunday edition of The Daily Telegraph. A call that is good for a sore response from those transporters. “There is a shortage of truck drivers all over Europe,” Marco Digioia, president of the European Road Haulers Association, told The Observer. “I’m not sure how many European truckers are willing to come to the UK.”
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Digioia subtly points out that the European Union has improved working conditions for truckers with new rules, while at the same time investing heavily in road infrastructure and parking facilities. Those rules don’t apply to the UK. Trying to lure truckers into the UK while Brexit means you will have to deal with extra border and customs controls… I think we have to be realistic’.
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energy crisis
The scarcity comes on top of another hot topic: the rapidly rising electricity and gas prices in the United Kingdom are an extra worry for Boris Johnson.
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The spike in wholesale prices has left energy suppliers with hundreds of thousands of customers gone over the headThere is a good chance that many Britons will have to pay considerably more when switching to a new supplier. British newspapers are already talking about a ‘winter of discontent‘, analogous to the harsh winter of 1978-’79 full of miners’ strikes that eventually paved the way for Margaret Thatcher.
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