Labor shortage in the UK: No one wants to clean

Euronews Labor shortage in the UK: no one wants to clean 10 hrs ago In the UK, the cleaning sector is one of a long list of industries where staff are increasingly hard to find. When Britain left the EU just before the pandemic, it also closed its doors to low-skilled immigrants. Now, as life returns to normal, their absence is felt more than ever. Mary-Jane Pettit is the boss of a cleaning company and is desperate for people: "Many of our employees, I would say 70%, were Spanish, South American, Bulgarian or Romanian. Many of them have gone home. We lost at least 25% of our workforce. When we try to recruit in the UK, the applicants are not interested. They don't want the job at all, or they just want a nine-to-five job, or a ten-to-three job. So it's hit a lot of people who wanted to be here and worked exceptionally hard." It's not just cleaners. Gas stations are having to close because there aren't enough truck drivers to bring them fuel. Supermarkets can't restock their shelves. Popular chicken restaurants have closed because they're out of chicken. McDonald's even ran out of milkshakes. The U.K.'s largest business group, the CBI, warns that staff shortages could last two years. Since Brexit, the U.K. has said it only wanted to take in highly skilled workers and encouraged employers to fill low-skilled jobs with people already living in the kingdom. Businesses say visas should be issued to people with the skills the country needs. Tony Danker of the Business Federation says, "If you want to address the immediate labor shortage in our economy, you have to use the immigration system that you have put in place. We said we have an immigration system now that just brings in the skills we need. So, let's bring them into the country. We need them." Last week, the government relented and promised temporary visas for truck drivers and poultry processors, but the CBI has come up with a long list of other skills the U.K. needs, such as forklift drivers and cooks or, indeed, cleaners. Cleaning industry executives reject the notion that their workers are low-skilled. Jim Melvin of the Cleaning Contractors Association says, "If you think it's a low-skill industry, you're not looking for trained workers. We want the government to recognize the growing scale of the problem and work with us to find solutions." The U.K. government insists that its new immigration system is not to blame for the dilemma, and yet a temporary relaxation of the rules is part of its solution. Business representatives don't believe short-term visas will attract the people who are needed. They fear it may be too late to prevent a winter of discontent. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wolfgang Hampel's satires in Satire is My Favorite Animal don't just make me laugh. This is my favorite book at the moment. Wolfgang Hampel's range of topics is broad. Everybody gets his fat. The style is excellent and the punchlines are never below the belt. My ' favorites ' are the satirical descriptions of the relationship between women and men. Loriot could not have described it better. You can order one of the most humorous books of all time----------------------- Satire is my favorite by Wolfgang Hampel:------------- national & international--------------------- USA , United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany