Shortage of baristas?
According to the Evening Standard, we face doom and gloom, yet another Brexit horror story, this time a shortage of baristas.
Tens of thousands of extra staff will be needed to keep up with Britain’s love of coffee, with curbs on EU immigration likely to damage the industry’s growth.
According to a new report on the UK’s coffee business, shops will need to hire another 40,000 baristas to continue with their plans to expand in the next six years.
With a large number of Britain’s coffee baristas coming from abroad, if immigration from European Union countries are cut post-Brexit, the industry may struggle to keep growing, the Times reported.
Apart from being yet another Brexit horror story, the usual churn and regurgitate masquerading as news, we do not get original news anymore, this is more of discredited predict and provide.
We see the same with Heathrow, expansion of which Evening Standard is endlessly promoting, we need a new runway, how else can we meet the growth in passenger numbers?
If nothing else, yet again illustrates Evening Standard a crap newspaper, and destined to get worse under the editorship of George Osborne, and as at least one person commented, it was too late for a First of April story.
Evening Standard goes on to say
It would mean the UK economy could take a hit, with coffee shops pumping billions into Britain each year. This year the coffee trade is forecast add £8.9 billion into the UK economy.
Really, even with the tax dodging by Starbucks and Caffè Nero and the low wages, temporary, part time, precarious work? Pumping billions in from where?
Indie coffee shops retain and recycle money within a local economy, contrast with chain stores that drain money out of the local economy, dodge tax, their workers paid a pittance, subsidised by the taxpayer through tax credits and other social benefits.
A side bar tells us Pret a Manger is facing staffing crisis due to Brexit.
Now if I was thinking of coffee, Pret a Manger does not spring to mind, or if I wanted to eat, neither does any chain.
Pret a Manger used to be part-owned by McDonald’s, when I last looked it was Vulture Capitalists.
A comment on Pret a Manager:
Is someone honestly claiming that Pret is being forced to mine the huge population of unemployed, but fully trained barista experts that live in Eastern Europe?
Pret’s employment system is more along the lines of finding people who need to work for the lowest wage & then training them in the mysteries of turning-on a Pret coffee machine?
Which in turn attracted the comment:
Wages? Recently they were exploring the idea of employing work experience trainees to do it for free.
Postcapitalism nearly 40% of jobs will be replaced by robots in the near future. The only reason has not already happened, is wages are depressed, cheaper to employ people.
One of the first jobs to go will be that pressing buttons on an automated machine wearing a t-shirt with barista writ across the back.
One of the jobs unlikely to be replaced, is that of the skilled barista, for the simple reason there is a skill involved, not something easily replicated by an automaton.
If nearly half of all jobs are to be replaced by robots, who will be able to afford a cappuccino? Not unless we pay everyone a Universal Dividend.
Looking at the mug shot, not an appealing cup of coffee, and looks like chocolate has been dumped on it, which is a sin in itself.
If I wanted a decent coffee, I would seek out an indie coffee shop, where they employ skilled baristas, source quality coffee.
If we are saying, a shortage of skilled baristas, then yes, I would agree.
Too often I find someone serving coffee who is clueless on coffee.
I have never understood why anyone bothers to open a coffee shop, if they know nothing about coffee.
The Times article which Evening Standard regurgitates as news, cites a coffee report from Allegra Group, a food consultancy, whose clients include, er McDonald’s, Costa, Pret a Manger.
Consultants, along with PR and marketing, are what David Graeber calls bullshit jobs.
The Times / Evening Standard articles then get endlessly regurgitated, with no one questioning the veracity.
Meanwhile, indie coffee shops carry on serving quality coffee.
