Employers have to face up Covid’s realities and offer better terms to frontline workers who now know their true worth
As the link between infection and death has weakened, attention has turned to the longer tail of the Covid-19 crisis – the most severe labour shortage in almost 25 years. Vaccines have rolled out, support programmes have wound down, restrictions have lifted, but normality remains some way off. A surge in the Delta variant, hundreds of thousands self-isolating and the Brexit-induced exodus of EU workers has left employers struggling to staff their long-awaited reopenings.
News of signing-on bonuses – or “golden hellos” – across several industries particularly desperate for workers have made headlines. Some of those bonuses are eye-popping – £10,000 for registered night nurses at Scottish care homes – particularly when you consider the average wage in those sectors. Care homes, according to a report from last year, are likely to pay less than the real living wage in much of the country. And a quick perusal of the government’s list of violators of the minimum wage law shows some of the same companies complaining of being understaffed. Meanwhile, Asda and Tesco are offering £1,000 bonuses for lorry drivers as worries of supermarket supply shortages loom.
