By Denis Sheehan
Itsu, the Asian restaurant and retail chain has announced their employees will get an 11% wage increase from tomorrow, taking pay well above the National Living Wage.
The increase will boost entry-level pay to a minimum £10.40 per hour across the chain for 1,000 employees at the company’s 72 UK outlets.
The announcement follows many others as hospitality employers face growing job vacancies and diminishing applications.
The Office for National Statistics states that the hospitality industry has 134,000 vacancies, that as a consequence finds many restaurants reducing the days and/or hours they open.
As many as one in five workers left hospitality during the pandemic, Brexit forced non UK residents to leave, and uncertainty around the robustness of employment in hospitality generally is keeping numbers low.
Across all industries the number of total vacancies in the three months to August climbed to over a million, the first occasion it has done so since the Office for National Statistics began such records in 2001.
The nationwide shortage of non UK resident workers is also significantly affecting supply chains. The Confederation of British Industry is now predicting this could last for up to two years.
The CBI and other trade bodies including the Institute of Hospitality and the Road Haulage Association have been calling on government to adopt a more flexible policy on immigration to tackle the problem. The government are however adamant that no such policy is possible, telling employers to hire and train UK nationals. If only reality was so simple.
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Hospitality & Catering News: More wage increases announced as people and skills shortages tighten. – 16 September 2021 – More wage increases announced as people and skills shortages tighten.
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