Hospitality: Understaffed and underpaid, now it’s got worse

By John Williams (Bar worker Unite, Cardiff in a personal capacity)

Hospitality has been one of the worst effected industries during the Covid pandemic.

There were over 30,000 job losses at the beginning of the crisis. Many weren’t eligible for furlough. Hours were cut drastically and people were sent home early as demand plummeted.

Then we had Boris Johnson and First Minister for Wales Mark Drakeford playing with our lives. They refused to shut down pubs – a breeding zone for Covid – despite the farce of Boris Johnson advising people not to go to the pubs, only because he wanted to protect his mates in insurance in London.

Many hospitality employers refused to use their £75 billion profits to cover lost workers’ wages or top up the 20% when we had furlough, despite us being the ones who make them their money.

We’ve had empty promises. The UK and Welsh governments make ‘bold’ announcements pretending they care about workers safety, when in reality they just want to maximise profits.

Dangerous

The previous 10pm curfew was dangerous and counterproductive in fighting the virus. The queues were longer and there were more gatherings. We were even more overworked and understaffed.

You get the odd customer who just wants to cause trouble or doesn’t believe in the virus, but the overwhelming majority of people genuinely want to follow the rules for the benefit of themselves and others.

But the rules, and especially the rules of who you can meet in a pub, make absolutely no sense, and they keep changing. And how can people remember it all if they’ve got alcohol in their system?

Bar workers aren’t against a 6pm curfew. What we are against is our living standards not being protected, and the hospitality industry decimated.

A hotel in Manchester had over 1,000 job applications for one job. But they still expect 30 in normal times.

It’s incredibly frustrating that hospitality isn’t being protected. Whenever we’re out of this mess, demand will probably pick up extremely quickly.

But the short-sightedness of the UK and Welsh governments is taking that opportunity away. The mood in my workplace is pessimistic, that things are going to get worse, we will be poorer.

We are tired of the likes of Keir Starmer refusing to say if he will back workers and unions over big bosses on concerns of safety. We are tired of Mark Drakeford not guaranteeing 100% pay, or failing to threaten nationalisation of job-cutting businesses.

Do boycotts work?

Some call for boycotts of pub chains that should have treated their workers better. But workers are exploited everywhere.

How is boycotting particular places, meaning less hours and less money for the workers, going to help? Support unionising instead.

Being understaffed, underpaid, and having no control of the rota, etc, were always issues in hospitality. But they have now come to the fore as the Covid crisis is exposing the entire rotten capitalist society.

We have concerns for our safety at work, with security not always on. Some pub workers have caught Covid from customers.

The public sector pay freeze has nothing to do with protecting the ‘public finances’. It’s a deliberate political strategy. It suits the Tories if different groups of workers blame each other, to distract us from the real enemy, which is them.

Since March, over 100,000 people have joined a union. 45,000 have joined my union Unite. Unite has launched ‘a new deal for hospitality workers’, supporting 100% pay, in work or not.

Hospitality workers are now becoming local organisers. In London, Glasgow, and Cardiff, there are WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages.

It doesn’t matter how we organise, but we must organise. There is always one more person at work we could speak to, one more leaflet we could give out, and one more meeting.