In a comment piece in today’s The Business (see p40 of Wednesday’s JEP), Lee Madden, the managing director of GR8 Employment Solutions, said that the ‘acute shortage’ of workers had already been felt in the hospitality sector, with the pandemic and the UK’s departure from the EU resulting in much less cross-border travel, and is starting to bite elsewhere.
His views were backed by Dandara managing director Martin Clancy, who said that firms across the UK and Jersey were struggling to find skilled staff.
Industry leaders in both Jersey’s hospitality and farming sector have spoken about the difficulties they are facing due to labour shortages this year.
‘It’s no secret that the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit have caused an acute shortage of people available for the work that needs doing,’ said Mr Madden.
‘It’s been clearly demonstrated within the hospitality industry, but it’s also becoming apparent in construction too.’
Mr Madden said that the Island’s smaller labour pool could become a ‘headache’ for construction firms with a number of large projects in the pipeline, such as building projects and redevelopments funded by the government’s fiscal stimulus programme.
‘During the pandemic, many were forced to leave the islands and the industry now has a smaller pool to tap into,’ he said.
‘Travel restrictions and Brexit have further squeezed the market of available labour, and although the UK would seem to be the easiest source, people are simply not travelling here to work.
‘Brexit changes and a desire to limit migration has meant new rules on who can come here from outside the Common Travel Area [the UK, Ireland and the Crown Dependencies].’
He added that the shortage of staff could lead to firms poaching workers by offering higher wages, and called for Jersey to look outside its borders to address the issue.
‘We would always look first to the local market, but we know that the squeeze on people means some businesses are being outpriced by others,’ he said.
‘This has already been happening in hospitality, and now we are hearing similar stories within construction. We all want to pay our people more, rewarding experience and hard work, but we cannot let a wage war get out of hand.
‘What we need is an agreement where businesses are not poaching staff, but that will only work if we can tap into a reliable source of labour. We do need to accept that we will have to reach out to other parts of the world to get the people we need to help our economy recover.’
Mr Clancy said that he felt Brexit was causing widespread staffing issues in the building industry as well as other sectors.
‘It’s a problem for all sectors across the country right now, in the UK and Jersey. We’ve been having staffing issues everywhere,’ he said.
‘It’s in particular for skilled workers. The main cause of it, I think, is Brexit and the end of freedom of movement of people. That’s what’s really done it.’
But Brian McCarthy, managing director of developers C Le Masurier, said the firm had prepared for Brexit and was employing high numbers of local staff to carry out its projects.
‘Certainly for the Merchant Square we are not having any problems with resources. We have 75% locally sourced staff working on the development, which is a really positive thing,’ he said.
‘We had a strategy in place before Brexit in case there was a worst-case scenario, so we have not really being experiencing any difficulties.’
