Douwe Egberts Coffee

[Docca]

A friend of mine is reasonably high up in DHL.

Spoke with him tonight. Told me that before Brexit they had an 8k national shortage of drivers but could manage.

Now, as of this week, there is a best guess shortage of 48k.

The average age of the long distance lorry driver in the UK is apparently upper 50s and we were being propped up by Europeans.

Thing is, Brexit has contributed to knackering that. A smaller part of what else is knackering this is Poland. Poland ( apparently one of the number of providers of drivers here) have introduced an ‘American’ style tax, whereby if you are Polish and overseas working you still pay tax to Poland. Rather than pay tax twice, Polish drivers are not coming here at all.

Driver power kicks in as numbers are so small. Now all through agencies…now stating they won’t get out of bed for at least £25/h, whereas before Brexit it was £12/h.

Such is the extent of this challenge, there are tens of thousands of pallets loaded with goods. Including Douwe Egberts coffee, who in 6 months time are forecasting that they won’t have coffee on the shelves of our stores at all.

[weeksy]

Wins the award for most random title for the thread this year.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

The shortage of HGV drivers had existed for at least 20 years, large Haulage firms have only got themselves to blame for it, they've pushed the independent hauliers out of business, not bothered training any new drivers and relied on drivers from the EU to make up the short fall.

If they want more HGV drivers they should pay people to train and pass their license.

[irie]

Strange how UK wages are going up now that cheap unskilled and semi skilled labour is no longer coming from the EU's high unemployment nations. Demand and supply kicking in, who'd have thunkit.

[Asian Boss]

Sink the buggers' boats; that's the Brexit I voted for.

[Kneerly Down]

Driver power kicks in as numbers are so small. Now all through agencies…now stating they won’t get out of bed for at least £25/h, whereas before Brexit it was £12/h.

Was it any wonder there were few people in the UK willing to get a HGV ticket if they were only going to earn £12/hr ?

[Mussels]

Another one complaining.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58012884
Why don't they just retrain the redundant pilots? Pretty much the same job except lorry driving is shorter training and better pay.

[Count Steer]

Seems like everyone's right to me. Crap employment arrangements by haulage companies and agencies, lousy rates of pay and impending IR35 sticking it to the self employed leads to a shortage of drivers.
Shortage of drivers back-filled with cheap labour from Eastern Europe.
Cheap labour supply gets crimped by Polish tax changes and UK leaving the EU.
Result 1: pay goes up but there's a lag because of limited availability of qualified UK drivers/people wanting to do such a shit job.
Result 2: prices go up + some shortages because of increased transport costs.
Result 3: Group A blames Brexit for everything, Group B blames everything but Brexit.

(There's probably a group C that blames Covid for everything and a 1 man group that blames the California government, Obama and Joe Biden for everything but he's otherwise occupied).

[Horse]

a 1 man group that blames the Califlautists and Bidobama for everything but he's otherwise occupied).

Who's that, then?

[Noggin]

a 1 man group that blames the Califlautists and Bidobama for everything but he's otherwise occupied).

Who's that, then?

Damn I needed coffee instead of tea this morning - I was just going to write something similar!! LOL

[Horse]

Instant coffee 1
Ground/filtered 0

[Noggin]

Instant coffee 1
Ground/filtered 0

[Mussels]

I don't think they expect any problem, thay just want people to go and panic buy their product.

[Saga Lout]

Strange how UK wages are going up now that cheap unskilled and semi skilled labour is no longer coming from the EU's high unemployment nations. Demand and supply kicking in, who'd have thunkit.

Low wages for British workers. Yet another EU benefit we've lost due to Brexit.

[Docca]

So he’s an exec, not a warehouse monkey. There is demonstrable differences between recruiting drivers now to before Brexit. The supply of cheap workforce has all but disappeared.

We don’t apparently have the resource in the UK to cover it ( Covid hasn’t helped- because they were trying to train British drivers). With the average age at nearly 60 of what we do have, there simply isn’t the throughput. British people don’t want to work for £12/hour. They also don’t want to do the other Lowe-paid jobs such as waiting tables or cleaning etc.

That’s fine. We’ll all pay a bit more to give everyone a better wage I’m sure. We’ll have to overcome the generation of people who think this is beneath them too, mind.

Personally, I order my coffee beans locally now.

[Rockburner]

Personally, I order my coffee beans locally now.

That plantation on the Surrey Downs came good then?

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

So he’s an exec, not a warehouse monkey. There is demonstrable differences between recruiting drivers now to before Brexit. The supply of cheap workforce has all but disappeared.

We don’t apparently have the resource in the UK to cover it ( Covid hasn’t helped- because they were trying to train British drivers). With the average age at nearly 60 of what we do have, there simply isn’t the throughput. British people don’t want to work for £12/hour. They also don’t want to do the other Lowe-paid jobs such as waiting tables or cleaning etc.

That’s fine. We’ll all pay a bit more to give everyone a better wage I’m sure. We’ll have to overcome the generation of people who think this is beneath them too, mind.

Personally, I order my coffee beans locally now.

You appear to be fine with paying HGV drivers low wages so you can have cheap coffee, must be great sat in the NHS Ivory tower where there's no competition for jobs, guaranteed pay rises, no redundancies and a gold plated pension, telling everyone how left wing you are.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Personally, I order my coffee beans locally now.

That plantation on the Surrey Downs came good then?

I order all my stuff locally 'cause I'm in my house when I do it.

[Mussels]

Don't forget how minimum wage has added to this problem, if someone can earn a minimum of £8.91 doing much easier jobs they are less likely to consider a driving career at £12 an hour.

I'm all for the market sorting itself out, if people want it they need to pay someone else enough to do it. If I lost my job I wouldn't mind unblocking drains for Pimlico Plumers for 100k.

[slowsider]

So he’s an exec, not a warehouse monkey. There is demonstrable differences between recruiting drivers now to before Brexit. The supply of cheap workforce has all but disappeared.

We don’t apparently have the resource in the UK to cover it ( Covid hasn’t helped- because they were trying to train British drivers). With the average age at nearly 60 of what we do have, there simply isn’t the throughput. British people don’t want to work for £12/hour. They also don’t want to do the other Lowe-paid jobs such as waiting tables or cleaning etc.

That’s fine. We’ll all pay a bit more to give everyone a better wage I’m sure. We’ll have to overcome the generation of people who think this is beneath them too, mind.

Personally, I order my coffee beans locally now.

You appear to be fine with paying HGV drivers low wages so you can have cheap coffee, must be great sat in the NHS Ivory tower where there's no competition for jobs, guaranteed pay rises, no redundancies and a gold plated pension, telling everyone how left wing you are.

Ermm..
"Pay for nurses and other NHS staff in England will have fallen in real terms by more than 7% since 2010, even if they accept the latest offer from the government, according to new analysis that will fuel rising anger about public sector pay deals."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ment-offer