Legal News

The UK’s skills shortages have led to many sectors having to recruit workers from EU member states at elevated wages.

The Daily Mail reports that the building trade is having to recruit bricklayers from Portugal at £1,000 per week to meet the demand for skilled brickies in Britain.

The energy sector is recruiting engineers from Spain to fills skills shortages – and even the sandwich industry is recruiting from eastern European countries like Hungary because of a shortage of skilled production line workers in the UK. Leading UK sandwich maker Greencore has admitted that it has been unable to find skilled production line workers locally in the UK – and has turned to workers from Hungary to fill the skills gap.

James Hicks from recruitment firm Manpower told the Mail:

“There is a severe shortage of skilled trades people in Britain – bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, mechanical engineers, HGV drivers.

“Where they were paying £500 a week at the beginning of the year, the demand for those skills means they are now paying £1,000 a week.

“That pressure on skills is huge – particularly in the construction industry in the South East and London.”

Mr Hicks said that many companies had abandoned training schemes for UK workers during the recession – and many construction companies had yet to reinstate them.

“That is not something that can be resolved quickly,” said Mr Hicks. “But companies need people who can work now – so they have had to put up pay and look elsewhere,” he added.

London-based bricklaying firm Guirard & Dicks claims that, every year, half its recruits come from overseas – mainly Ukraine and Poland.

Mark Dicks said that, as a result of skills shortage in the UK, bricklayers from overseas can command £200 a day.

“‘If it was not for Eastern Europeans coming over, there would be a bigger shortage,” added Mr Dicks.

The Conservative MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, Philip Davies, has called for more apprenticeships rather than university courses, to equip UK workers for the jobs market:

“It is a sad state of affairs when people in this country are not capable of doing the jobs that other people can,” said Mr Davies.

“That is why the government is right to focus on apprenticeships – instead of sending people on a conveyer belt to university on a course which will be of no use to them.

“Apprenticeships will teach people the skills that are needed, so that we do not need to go abroad for them,” he added.

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