Brexit has occurred; now we need to make some changes

Be careful what you wish for. Having voted for Brexit, the country is now desperately short of EU workers to pick crops, drive vans, stack shelves in warehouses, serve food and drink, and mop floors and wipe tables.

The same people who willed us to leave the EU are now moaning about slow service in bars and restaurants – or no service at all – as some places are forced to shut because they can’t get the staff. Fruit and vegetables are left rotting in parts of the country that were among the most pro-Brexit. Suddenly, they’ve found that those Europeans they so relied upon are no longer available. Some of it is Covid-related but once the pandemic is over, many of the holes will still be unfilled.

It’s enough to make a Remainer laugh and say, “told you so”. This, though, isn’t a joke. Looking back to what could have been will not get us anywhere. What is done is done, we’ve left the EU, which means the UK must find a way of filling the vacancies or else the economic fallout will be dire.

This will require a wholesale realignment of the labour market. For decades we’ve been used to foreign workers doing jobs that we Brits did not want to do ourselves, either because they were casual or we saw them as too lowly. We would marvel how it was that we could go through an entire day or even a week, without dealing with a local: shop assistants, bar staff, waiters, car washers, cleaners, plumbers, you name it, they were all foreign, often from eastern Europe. Now, we must step in and do the work ourselves.

For that to happen, we need as a society to attach greater value to these posts, to give them a formal structure, to pay their holders properly, to treat them well.

It can’t be coincidence the sectors missing staff the most are those which traditionally have paid the minimum wage, less in some cases, and complain like mad whenever the national level is raised.

Restaurant owners will say, with some justification, that you shouldn’t base what someone receives on their published figures – with tips, they can earn a lot more. Yes but the problem with gratuities is that they are just that, they’re unpredictable. They can ebb and flow during the week and over different periods of the year and be determined by factors outside the staff member’s control. The only certainty a waiter may have is that basic hourly rate, which could be too little.

It's not only the poor pay. These are industries notorious for arduous demands imposed on their workers. The two frequently go hand in hand: low wages and strenuous hours, suggesting just how little owners and bosses appreciate their employees. It’s true as well that often they don’t afford a career path, that anyone becoming a waiter or a cleaner is unable to see how they might progress.

Some, the more enlightened employers, will say, with justification, they respect all their staff, that they have a high regard for every one of them and their positions. Unfortunately, that is not industry-wide. Before they start firing off and accusing, and appealing for governmental assistance, bosses need to take a hard look at themselves and what they demand of those who work for them. Perhaps they should pay higher wages, in which case their profits will be lower. Or they may feel they can pass the cost on to the consumer and we ought to swallow increased prices. Inflationary pressures are likely to build as a result.

Government, too, needs to intervene. It can’t be coincidence either, that the industries hit hardest are also those where protections and rights for staff are either non-existent or negligible.

Ever since the first Tony Blair administration, the emphasis from on high has been to encourage as many as possible to go to university. The result has been numerous courses offering unsuitable degrees at institutions that should not be called universities. Everything has been about sending school-leavers to “uni”. The fact that not everyone is right for university has been lost, as has the understanding that lower-skilled roles equally matter.

This aspirational drive has had ramifications elsewhere. Our housing market is skewed towards the middle class. Again, the fact that 74 per cent of jobs in hospitality in London and the southeast, where property prices and rents are highest, were until recently held by staff from outside the UK, predominantly from within the EU, is closely allied.

We’ve devalued posts such as these. In other countries, bar and waiting staff, for example, are rated more highly than in the UK. Schools, parents, they must not turn up their noses at the thought of pupils and offspring heading down this route. Equally, they must be made more attractive and possible, and that requires additional affordable housing, as well as better pay and conditions.

Likewise, though, our children have to stop feeling so entitled. A common gripe among employers is that they can’t attract recruits from Britain, that locals are simply not interested in beginning at the bottom and possess no desire to work hard. They may raise the wages, offer extra benefits such as longer holidays, and still the jobs go begging. They speak of applicants only wanting to come in as a “manager”, without having any experience, let alone previously shouldering any responsibility.

Brexit has occurred; now, if we’re to progress, a behavioural and attitudinal sea change is required.