Saturday, October 2nd, 2021
Bottlenecks in the UK
Johnson doesn’t want cheap foreign workers
There is a shortage of around 100,000 truck drivers in the UK. The resulting deficiencies in fuel, for example, are causing unrest on a political level. Prime Minister Johnson rejects proposals to recruit workers from abroad.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has rejected calls to relax immigration rules to curb the truck driver shortage in his country. Motorists in Great Britain are currently having great difficulty in obtaining fuel because many petrol stations can no longer be adequately supplied.
“What we don’t want is to go back to a situation where the logistics industry relies on a lot of low-cost immigration, which means that salaries don’t go up and the quality of jobs doesn’t go up,” said Johnson. The UK economy must end its dependence on poorly paid foreign workers in order to become a “well-paid, well-educated, highly productive economy”.
The British Conservative Party Conference begins in Manchester on Sunday. The fuel crisis threatens to overshadow the conference. The UK is currently estimated to be missing around 100,000 truck drivers. This has already led to empty shelves in supermarkets. There is also a significant shortage of skilled workers in other sectors, such as the meat industry. Large numbers of workers from the eastern EU countries have emigrated since the British decided to leave the community of states.
In order to get the fuel shortage under control, the government announced that it would immediately issue 300 visas for tankers, which are limited until March. In addition, around 100 military personnel will help distribute fuel from Monday. The government also sent a million letters to truck drivers asking them to return to the trucking profession.
The addressees reportedly included thousands of Germans living in the UK who had obtained their car driver’s license before 1999 – but had never driven a truck. The class 3 driving license issued at the time also allowed the driving of trucks up to 7.5 tons.