Paul Murphy, who chairs the organisation’s retail and supply committee, said there were approximately 125 positions currently being advertised for the sector on the gov.je website – and that they were seeing vacancy rates of up to 10% in some ‘key food and grocery operators’.
Mike Rutter, the retail managing director for SandpiperCI – the Island’s biggest retailer – recently warned that the group could be forced to temporarily close stores unless urgent action was taken to tackle the labour crisis.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham has said that importing workers and reskilling the local workforce were ‘key’ to addressing the problem.
Mr Murphy said: ‘The retail industry has very real and live vacancy shortages, and this is now becoming a concern for the quality of offer and ability to operate current trading hours, service levels and maintain the strong service offerings that customers expect of retailers in Jersey.’
He echoed Mr Rutter’s suggestion that if the labour could not be sourced locally, it needed to be ‘brought in’.
Mr Murphy said: ‘We would support the point raised. [There is an] immediate need of recruitment offshore, and would encourage combined longer-term efforts to further job skills and support knowledge training of those Islanders who wish to explore this route, as either a career change or a career start.’
He added: ‘We would question the incentives available to ensure this is attractive in the short-term for those people wishing to work in the retail sector from offshore.
‘[There needs to be] a focus on the cost of living and the accommodation stock and prices, which currently make the offer less attractive for many today.’
Senator Farnham said: ‘Importing workers is the key part of the solution, but the solution is also based around reskilling and equipping our local workforce and providing good-quality, affordable worker accommodation.
‘We are working hard to provide the necessary support mechanisms for the industry, and I am confident that we will see improvements as we move into 2022.’
When asked whether he was worried about the impact on Christmas shopping, town centre and events manager Connor Burgher said: ‘From what I’m hearing, some shops are looking at changing their opening hours so hopefully there will be just as much choice but perhaps the times when people can access that choice may change.’
He added: ‘I hope that government will work with business owners to work out the needs of each business and support them in any way they can. The labour shortage is not an exclusively retail issue, we’re also seeing it in hospitality and many other industries. The parish will do all we can to support businesses too.’
Mr Murphy said: ‘Resilience and change in retail is a constant tension and this new challenge does come after Covid challenges and impacts [of] supply-chain issues on planning and resilience. All of this requires the attention of teams to ensure the consistency and quality of the service is one people want to use.’
