Industry bosses have warned that if the staff shortage crisis is not resolved, the Test and Trace “pingdemic” will leave supermarket shelves empty in just weeks. This warning is based on the figures from last week that showed more than 600,000 Brits were forced to self-isolate after being alerted by the NHS Covid-19 app. Three key sectors that’ll face the repercussions of this are hospitality, manufacturing and retailers.
FT has reported that the UK Hospitality, the trade body, now estimates up to a fifth of workers are self-isolating at any one time and that is on top of the sector lacking 10 per cent — or 200,000 — employees.
It is essential to acknowledge the role that corner shops have played during the pandemic. Most of these corner shops in the UK are owned by members of ethnic minority communities. According to the data, insights and consulting company Kantar’s report last year, it was reported that “over the lockdown period corner shops and independent grocers have reported a 63% upsurge in trade. The three months leading to 17 May saw sales made by independently-owned retailers increase by more than two times that of the fastest-growing supermarket chain Co-op.”
However, in last week’s issue of Asian Voice, Anjum Khan, Director of ABCC (Asian Business Chamber of Commerce) had given a similar assessment and said, “Asian businesses will be, like other firms, exposed to staff shortages, if their staff are required to isolate after being exposed to Covid and contacted by Test and Trace. Lots of Asian firms operate in the hospitality, retail and wedding industries, sectors that heavily rely on in-person staffing. If a business operating in this sector has a number of staff isolating at once, this could result in more closures, postponement of events and cash losses for these businesses, which have already been hit extremely hard during this health crisis.”
While No10 has already declared that critical sectors - such as medicine, emergency services and border control - that certain staff can bypass 10-day isolation and instead take daily tests.
The Mirror has reported that the Covid operations sub-committee of Cabinet will consider widening the number of jobs eligible for the testing regime, or whether to boost the numbers for existing sectors. Among these are 10,000 workers in the food sector who might be included in the scheme for fully vaccinated workers to be exempt from isolation if they test negative.
In his opinion piece for The Independent, Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London wrote that a “major structural change” and “net immigration” will govern the labour crisis and employment in the near future. He also added, “...there are very clear and consistent reports of staff shortages as businesses – especially in the hospitality sector – reopen. And there is clear evidence that there was indeed a large exodus (even if we remain uncertain as to its magnitude) of EU-origin workers during the pandemic. It’s entirely reasonable to suggest that the two are connected.”
