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UK employers struggle with worst labour shortage since 1997

this is true, but im waiting for them to take me to court cos they arent getting a penny out of me until then.

My defence ? ' Well you took my only way of earning a living off me so good luck...

then call out all the other stuff, might backfire on me, but il certainly tarnish their rep
 
FridgeMagnet said:
I earned £5-6 per hour temping with Blue Arrow in the 90s before I got my first "proper" job. Even then it was a bit of a pisstake and only worked if you had cheap rent from living at home. I learned slightly too late to go with agencies that did work for the London property firms, who'd pay 50-100% more, plus they would always offer you work outside of the agency if you were any good to avoid their cut.

The Blue Arrow office jobs were quite interesting though - they did lots with probation and community service, and once I even got to type up notes from an international organised crime conference. (A police conference I hasten to add.)
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hah me too! blue arrow in lewisham, longest gig was for sure start on the aylesbury...having seen sure start up close is partly what winds me up when ever a blairite bangs on about how amazing it was
i just walked into blue arrow, showed off my weak word skills and had a secretarial job the next week and onwards
from speaking to some younger people supposedly its really competitive to get secretarial jobs through temp agencies now - now being the last few years
 
ska invita said:
hah me too! blue arrow in lewisham, longest gig was for sure start on the aylesbury...having seen sure start up close is partly what winds me up when ever a blairite bangs on about how amazing it was
i just walked into blue arrow, showed off my weak word skills and had a secretarial job the next week and onwards
from speaking to some younger people supposedly its really competitive to get secretarial jobs through temp agencies now - now being the last few years
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It was still slightly rare to be able to type and use Word then, plus a lot of routine secretarial tasks that you'd give to a temp are now obsolete with computer systems.
 
SpookyFrank said:
How that is 'self employment' I've no fucking idea. Mind you up until last year (when I was shitcanned with immediate effect due to lockdown) I was 'self employed' working for a charity and still many of the same clawback tactics were used; I had to pay for my own tools, training, insurance, first aid certification, DBS etc but was still told I couldn't work for other people.
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Report them to HMRC. Also go to an employment tribunal to ask for holiday pay. You might get a pay out.
 
A server in Canada who switched career during furlough writes:

Let me shed some light on the “mystery” of this labour shortage: With an abysmally low rate of pay, bad (often erratic) hours, no sick days and near-constant sexual harassment, racism, sexism and queerphobia, working in service sucks.

And yet that hasn’t stopped pundits, and even some restaurateurs, from decrying our lack of good ol’ fashioned work ethic and blaming the government dole for keeping us from returning to our rightful place: tableside, making them money and waiting on our betters.

What has been said about us – that CERB has kept us from re-entering the work force, that we are lazy and unambitious, that we simply don’t want to work – is ridiculous.

It’s also indicative of the way much of society thinks about working-class bodies: as expendable, interchangeable, replaceable parts of a capitalist machine over which it has ownership. Some people not only feel entitled to our labour, but to pay as little for it as possible.

Let’s be clear, then. It’s not that we don’t want to work – it’s just that we don’t want to work a physically demanding job in substandard conditions without benefits for minimum wage. And we especially don’t want to do that during the rising fourth wave of a pandemic.

www.theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: I’m one of the service workers who left the restaurant industry during the pandemic. Serve yourself

In every bar and restaurant in North America right now, you’re apt to see the same sign hanging in the window: Help wanted
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
 
My brothers third son is a mechanical engineer but needs a HGV licence as part of his job which sometimes involves driving a big tanker.
His boss has already given him a payrise and a bonus to nip any potential desertion in the bud. I believe he has been promised another if he is still there come Xmas
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Hospitality: Bullying, low pay and burn-out blamed for staff shortage

As another popular Welsh restaurant closes its doors, what's next for the hospitality industry?
www.bbc.co.uk

Hospitality workers have called for changes to the industry after an award-winning restaurant in south Wales closed its doors.
Shauna Guinn, co-owner of Hang Fire in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, said the decision to close after a decade of building the business was "heart-breaking".
She blamed staff shortages and called the industry "our own worst enemy".
Others said hospitality must tackle a culture of bullying and low pay.
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"When we reopened after the second lockdown this year and we asked everybody to come back to work... [but] we pretty much lost our entire senior team of chefs" she said.
"We lost our head chef who went to work for a street-food business, we lost a head chef who went to work at home because he's got twin boys and he became a house husband, we lost another guy to a garden centre and we lost a young chef to be a Tesco delivery driver. So it's not that they left Hang Fire, they left the industry."

She said the industry was tough to work in because of long, unsociable hours, physical work and low pay
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1983 £56 a week as a BT apprentice. More than any of my mates. Not bad as for the first two years you didn’t do any work just college, training school and attachments across all engineering teams.

After three years onto a nine day fortnight.

Of course day one ‘lesson three’ after the toilets and fire drill and then the big boss was the Union. Which all of our instructors and managers told us to join.

I wonder if these things coukd be linked…
 
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But food prices might go up................

From Retail Gazette

Sainsbury’s recently-appointed chief executive Simon Roberts was paid a £583,000 bonus in his first nine months on the job despite the grocer posting a £261 million full year loss.

Roberts’ fixed salary being £736,000, his total pay for the year ending March 6 – less than a year after he stepped into the chief executive role – was £1.32 million.

While Sainsbury’s annual report, published this week, indicated that Roberts did indeed waive his annual bonus, he was still paid a separate £583,000 award based around a long term incentive plan known internally as Future Builder.

Sainsbury’s chief financial officer Kevin O’Byrne, who took home £2.32 million for the financial year ending March 6.

This comprised an annual bonus of £828,000, a long term incentive plan award of £674,000 and a fixed salary of £822,000.
Click to expand...
 
SpookyFrank said:
Bullying, low pay and burnout blamed for staff shortage.

BBC could save a few words here by just saying 'businesses blamed for staff shortage' but then it would start to look less like a crisis and more like karma.
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It's more than just businesses. It's an entire culture and system that has been the norm for so long it's just been accepted.
All of a sudden enough breathing space has been given to people to re-evaluate their lives and go "Fuck me, you know what, I've been a complete fucking sucker. Fuck that for a game of soldiers."
 
A380 said:
It’s amazing how the very rich can be motivated by paying them more money even when they fail but you can’t motivate poor people to improve their performance by paying them more. Oh well, one of life’s mysteries I suppose.
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Helps the poorest are already working flat out and it’s physically impossible to work harder.

If we paid each according to his labour the world would be a very different place
 
Pickman's model said:
what, what's wrong with forcing people to work for a fucking pittance to boost bosses' profits? oh and it doesn't reduce the odds of them ending up in prison (A money-making cycle of incarceration: The private sector and UK prison labour). i don't think wilkos have taken on a single one of the thousands of inmates who've made that business what it is
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prison labour undercutting the wages of workers of course no new thing - from the irishman of 9 december 1876, news from britain:
1631266999944.png
 
Artaxerxes said:
Helps the poorest are already working flat out and it’s physically impossible to work harder.

If we paid each according to his labour the world would be a very different place
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Yes, well we don’t though… so stop whinging. The most ambitious poor people become rich people. The least ambitious rich people stay rich. It sucks, but that’s how it works
 
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