There is a column in the Food & Wine supplement in the Business Post titled, ‘The Secret Restaurateur’ (pay walled). It is anonymous and written by an ‘industry insider’: a hospitality employer. I hadn’t come across this column before but thanks to Senator Marie Sherlock (@marie_sherlock) for referring to this contribution on her Facebook page.
The employer-cum-columnist takes aim at his/her peers in the hospitality sector who are scapegoating employees for their recruitment problems.
‘I have heard employers describe workers as choosing their couch and Netflix over returning to work. Others ask if those claiming the payment are in Ireland at all. The language used is clearly crafted to attack and demean those who have relied on the supports. Too often the commentary has descended into welfare bashing - the peddling of a pernicious narrative stigmatising those on the PUP [Pandemic Unemployment Payment].’
This is a far cry from the narrative coming from employers’ organisations who seem to think that abolishing PUP would solve the labour shortage problem in the hospitality sector. However, the evidence suggests otherwise.
First, hospitality workers are coming off PUP at a faster rate than almost all other sectors.
Between early February, when the number of PUP recipients peaked and the last date we have data for, September 28th, the number of hospitality workers receiving PUP declined from 112,000 to 18,000 - a reduction of 94,000.
So what’s all this about a labour shortage?
Of course, just because you formerly worked in the hospitality sector doesn’t mean that you will return to that sector when you sign off of PUP. You might find better-paying work in another sector (e.g. retail). You might return to education or take up a SOLAS course to gain a new skill. You might be leaving Ireland (i.e. go home) or to some part of the country. You might take up primary caring responsibilities in the home while your partner works.
Whatever the reason might be, it’s not people lying around in their underwear, drinking Red Bull and binge watching some zombie series on Netflix. It’s that people are working somewhere else. Our Secret Restaurateur has this to say:
‘These are people whose lives changed fundamentally when they were hurtled into unemployment. Many of the [hospitality] jobs now being offered to them are part-time and unreliable. It is unreasonable to expect workers to leave the security of the PUP when there is no part-time payment support option.’
Issues with staff turnover and recruitment and retention issues have existed in the sector for a long time, pre-dating the financial crash. This study asked employees who had left their hospitality employer what would have ‘definitely’ made them stay:
- 28 percent said higher pay
- 20 percent said career progression
- 15 percent said more flexible working hours
- 13 percent said working less social hours
- 10 percent said improved benefits packages
- 8 percent said better training
Pay, career, flexibility, benefits: the lack of these are driving the crisis in the hospitality sector – a crisis that goes beyond just the post-pandemic period.
In a follow-up column, the Secret Restaurateur continues this theme (I don’t know if it is the same author):
‘ . . the message reaching the public is that we [employers] blame workers for our woes with the subtext that some of them are social welfare cheats. Fáilte Ireland, meanwhile, undertook a rather pointless survey of tourism employers to ask them why they believed workers were taking up their job offers. If the goal of this research was to discover why workers are not taking up jobs, perhaps it might been better to ask the workers themselves?
‘In the meantime, a video of a business owner extolling the monetary benefits of the pandemic does the round and a young worker collects his wages in the form of a bucket of coppers. It is beyond farcical.’
Yes, farcical is a good word. But this leads us to an important insight for progressives and trade unionists; namely, there are some employers who get it. They understand that the long-term future of hospitality and, indeed, any sector is built around a skilled and motivated workforce, working within inclusive practices and institutions. There is no future in race-to-the-bottom strategies – whether that is wage-suppression, lowest common denominator working conditions, or denial of employee voice.
These employers (who also need help from being undermined by low-road operations) can be helpful allies in putting the businesses on a high-road path. What these employers must do, however, is to find a way to collectively make their voice heard and champion the same issues trade unions highlight in the workplace, in spite of the opposition from their own peers.
As the Secret Restaurateur concludes:
‘Instead of taking the easy option and blaming our workers, it might be wise to refocus on the real reasons for poor retention in our industry: high business costs, the black economy, low pay, and inadequate training and career development. It would help if employers showed greater respect for their employees too.’
Indeed.
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