Imagine if you will, a line of cargo ships with another line of cargo ships next to them, almost like a car park waiting to get into the docks.
Depending on where you are in the queue, it could take three to four weeks before your cargo is unloaded. The reason for this is not a strike by dockers, but the fact but there are not enough trucks to take away the containers that had already been unloaded. This was the situation at a Long Island, USA port last November. There is still a shortage of lorry drivers in the UK and truckers in the USA. The shortage is part of a worldwide problem in attracting staff into certain jobs.
In Italy, the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, has doubled the quota for migrant workers in a move to fill the huge labour shortages in the economy. The quota is being raised to 70,000 temporary visas despite the presence of an anti-immigration league in his national unity coalition government. With nearly 100,000 migrant landings in the last two years, the failure of recent amnesties for illegal residents and stubbornly low numbers of repatriations of failed asylum seekers, the league called for an ‘Italians first’ approach. Italian youth unemployment is one of the highest in Europe, standing at 30% in 2020. Compare this to the UK where the youth unemployment rate is currently about 11.5%.
Last year in Italy when seasonal Bulgarian and Romanian farmhands could not come due to coronavirus restrictions, appeals for Italian students, pensioners and furloughed workers to replace them had little success. In the Republic of Ireland similar problems exist. During the height of the pandemic when students were not at university, the cleaning industry - through the ICCA - lobbied government to allow those overseas students on a student visa to work 40 hours per week instead of 20 hours per week, a request that was accepted. Similar representations were made for migrant refugees/asylum seekers to be integrated into the workforce which were not successful.
The situation is similar in other European countries. A perfect storm is heading towards the UK and one of the victims of this will be the cleaning industry. We have already seen the government allow long term asylum seekers to cover staffing emergencies under a scheme agreed by the Home Secretary. There are in the region of 32,000 asylum seekers who have been waiting more than 12 months that will be eligible for this scheme. There are an estimated 140,000 vacancies or 10% of the workforce in the care sector which illustrates the scale of the problem. The current government is not inclined to issue temporary visas until it is too late. For example, it offered temporary visas for truck drivers which were not taken up.
So what of the cleaning industry? Firstly, consecutive governments have failed to recognise the importance of cleaning as a profession. The industry itself has an image problem and it is difficult to attract staff at the best of times. The government has also added to the pressure on employers. For example, 300,000 new taxpayer-funded roles have been created during the pandemic, whilst hard-hit businesses struggle to find staff to fill vital roles. Currently, however, young people are not attracted to the cleaning industry as a career. In addition, older members of the workforce, who in the past may have carried on working, have now decided to retire - perhaps due to COVID - and whilst the UK is not issuing temporary visas, this will result in facilities not being cleaned or cleaned less frequently.
About the contributor
Stan Atkins
CEO
BICSc