There SHOULD be pay rises in most sectors, including HGV. But pay rises won't solve the staff problem, and here's why.
For arguments’ sake, imagine we give a 20 per cent pay rise to HGV drivers. This attracts 20,000 people from lower paid jobs. HGV problem solved (in a year or so)
But…
The industries those 20,000 new drivers used to work in will now experience a 20k loss of staffing.
Let's say these are local delivery drivers – people bringing shopping to your door. So we still have a delivery problem, just at a different stage of delivery…
If the 20,000 are from hospitality, pubs will face a crisis. If they’re from farming: a farm staff crisis. Care sector: a nursing crisis. Etc.
Those industries could also give 20 per cent pay increases to attract replacements, but that just pushes the crisis lower down the economy…
Obviously not every new HGV driver will emerge from one sector. The pain will, instead, be spread across all areas of the economy … but it won't go away.
You can say "let's get the unemployed to do it", but if they were too "lazy" before, they will still be now. And …
They weren't too "lazy" before. Benefits are incredibly low, very hard to claim, short-lived, and require you to accept any job offered.
If you're unemployed it's because there are factors (usually health) stopping you from working. And that isn't gonna suddenly heal …
We can’t conjure up 20,000 new workers from nowhere.
We can only push the problem somewhere else, so we get pain in a different low-paid sector (that we suddenly realise we are dependent on, and which Brexit has ruined).
And we'll generate loads of inflation in the process…
We’ve already had Wetherspoons demanding the government relax immigration rules so they can get staff. Hauliers are doing it now. Fishing sector. Farming. Construction. Nursing.
There are staff shortages across almost every area of the economy already…
During the referendum we were warned the UK was dependent on labour from overseas, and we pretended we could do that work ourselves.
People blame Covid for this. Sure, Covid is hurting badly.
But people returned to their country of origin to wait out Covid…
And they’re not returning because our national character is now a furious, shaven-headed man in a union jack t-shirt telling them to f*ck off; and the home secretary demanding giant wave machines to drown them all. [and who wants to go through the whole visa thing?…Ed]
Brexit, and the passions it unleashed, did this…
We can (and should) give better pay to those in low-paid jobs. But it won't solve the staffing problem. It will just move it around.
I don’t know what the solution is. Breaking things is so simple. Mending them again is vastly complicated. But that’s where we are.
Originally tweeted by Russ Jones (@RussInCheshire) on 26/08/2021.
