UK pub and restaurant owners have warned of staff shortages after thousands of workers left the hospitality industry to return to their home countries or to take on other jobs during the pandemic.
Operators across the industry told the Financial Times that when they called back employees on leave this week to prepare for the reopening of drinking and eating outdoors in England, they found that many did not want to return.
“We have a few companies where we’ve lost some of the team [and because of furlough] Until now, the operators have failed to realize that not all employees may be returning, ”said Phil Urban, General Manager of Mitchells & Butlers, the UK’s largest publicly traded pub group.
Urban estimated that about 9,000 of M & B’s 39,000 employees had left since the first lockdown last year, many to take on other home delivery or retail jobs that were booming during the pandemic.
Jeremy King, executive director of Corbin & King, which owns The Wolseley and Delaunay restaurants in London, said he expected it would take 20 new employees to bring the group’s headcount to around 600 before reopening but now has 130 To fill roles. “People actually said we won’t be back. I don’t think restaurateurs realize how serious it is. “
Des Gunewardena, managing director of D&D, who owns 38 restaurants in London, Manchester and Leeds, said he plans to “quickly rebuild” the company’s workforce to meet high demand.
“We don’t know how difficult it will be when many EU workers leave the UK permanently, but I think it will be difficult,” he said.
According to the rules of the vacation program, employees are not allowed to work for the employer who requested the assistance but are allowed to find another job. There is also no rule against employees who settle abroad.
During the last lockdown, the hotel industry had around 2 million employees on vacation, according to the UKHospitality trade organization. In the course of the pandemic, 660,000 people working in the sector have lost their jobs.
Recommended
Kate Nicholls, UKHospitality director, said the labor shortage problem “just emerged” and was partly due to the difficulty for employers to offer guaranteed hours to employees due to uncertainty about trade. Restrictions on the number of restaurant and pub customers in England are expected to remain in effect until at least June 21st, even after operators open for indoor service on May 17th.
So far the problem has been felt most clearly in London, which generally has a higher proportion of foreign workers. A small London pub chain estimated that it had lost about 20 percent of its staff.
Nick Mackenzie, managing director of Greene King, said that in larger cities, where commerce was particularly quiet due to the lack of tourists and office workers, employees tended to take longer vacations and were more likely to try to find other work.
According to data from CGA and AlixPartners Market Recovery Monitor, sales in pubs, bars and outdoor restaurants on the first day of reopening in England on Monday increased 64 percent from the corresponding day in 2019 and 94 percent in London.
However, on Wednesday and Thursday there were double-digit trade declines from 2019.
Only 23 percent of the English venues were able to open to foreign trade.