How this sandwich maker could attract a local workforce
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Version 0 of 1. The news that managers from a British food company were setting off for Hungary to recruit staff for a new sandwich operation in Northampton was greeted with the wearily despairing headlines reserved for known national failings. “Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?” asked the Daily Mail. Others offered instant sandwich-making classes – just in case, perhaps, anyone fancied one but had lost the recipe or felt in need of a spot of training before submitting an application. For me, the lament revived two memories. One was of what seemed like an eternity spent trying to butter “white sliced” for younger siblings’ birthday parties, before the advent of spreadable margarine made it all so much easier. The other was of caustic English teachers who would snap “can’t? – or won’t?” at the slightest provocation. For the question is surely not if there anyone left who can make a sandwich, but is there anyone left who will? What is lacking is not the ability but the inclination. To which the standard response, of course, is that your average Brit is (a) lazy (can’t be bothered to get up in the morning), (b) pernickety (would maybe agree to tend a bar but not a sandwich production line) or (c) pampered by a benefits system to the point that sandwich-making is more an option than a necessity. Is it any wonder then that British employers are travelling east in search of the last few workaholic Hungarians/Poles/Lithuanians prepared to get on a Wizzair flight and quadruple their earnings over here? The problem isn’t even new. It is just the latest variation of the Pret problem. Three or four years ago, several worthies, among them the then employment minister, Chris Grayling, and the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, asked why they were so rarely served by anyone local at a Pret a Manger, especially when unemployment among local young people remained so stubbornly high. All manner of explanations were offered, many of which probably combined to give us something like the truth. Young foreign workers were, it was said, by and large, better educated, more quickly trained and simply keener (that is, they turned up on time and did not call in sick). They were prepared to work more, or more flexible, hours. You could recruit them in batches through an agency that ensured consistency and let the employer off procedures, such as checking someone’s right to work in the UK. It is only fair to note that Pret, among others, has since introduced a scheme to attract school-leavers and has tried separately – without much proven success – to recruit more locals (the proportion has risen from 17% to 20% in three years). Nor should the peculiarity of London be discounted; London is the great draw for young foreign workers. Food outlets employ many more local staff outside the capital. It has also to be said that the Greencore Group, which is setting up the new sandwich-making factory in Northampton to serve Tesco, M&S and Sainbury’s, appears to have done everything by the book. It hung a large sign on the site of its new development inviting applications, and recruited 50 workers from a job fair in Corby, 20 miles away, where a sandwich factory had recently closed. It also justified its recruitment drive in Hungary not just by the shortage of local applications, but by the relatively low unemployment in Northampton and by the fact that, as the HR director said, sandwich-making was “not always the kind of work people have wanted to do”. And yet, and yet … How much, I wonder, is Greencore proposing to pay its new recruits? Would it have had better luck attracting a largely homegrown workforce if it had offered a higher rate? What if it had sited its new plant in an area with higher unemployment? It is reported to have received government funding for creating local jobs – should that not come with certain strings relating to pay and recruitment? Or the converse: why the government incentive to set up here if jobs are already so plentiful as to deter recruitment? The sums may add up for the company, but do they add up for Northants jobseekers or for British taxpayers? The UK, I fear, persists in the delusion that it is a high-skilled high-productivity, high-pay economy when for at least a decade or more it has been nothing of the kind. Statistically, average pay looks far better than it is, because the rewards at the very top are so colossal. And pressure for higher pay is restrained by tax credits. If you are young, without dependents, passably educated, prepared to share a room and looking to improve your life, you could do worse than make sandwiches around the clock in Northampton. If, on the other hand, you already live there and have family obligations, the equation would look quite different. Academics argue back and forth about why UK productivity remains low, while employment has held up remarkably well through the recession. Look no further than a Northampton sandwich for the start of an answer. Like so much of the new British economy, sandwich making is low-skilled but intensive work. The company could maybe automate more functions, but that’s expensive and it’s not the only option. When the locals find better things to do, you hire more Hungarians. At least they know about salami. |