Restaurant staff shortages and where the blame lies

Mar 17 2009 Agenda, Birmingham Post

Restaurants are being crippled by lack of suitable staff. Jabbar Khan, of Lasan, looks at the issues.

It seems the Skills Minister is ignorant of the “skills and experience” required to be a professional chef and also oblivious to the causes of high unemployment amongst Asian women. It’s no wonder his solution to a very serious business crisis is not only irresponsible but also offensive to industry professionals.

He quite clearly underestimates the expertise required to be a professional chef and to run a commercial kitchen. To assume that someone is capable of working in a restaurant kitchen purely because that is the food of their origin is totally ridiculous. Would he suggest that all the British housewives who have mastered a cottage pie are capable of producing restaurant quality cuisine?

Male dominance in the restaurant kitchen is a worldwide phenomenon and not one that is purely representative of Asian kitchens. It’s implicitly clear that he is unaware of the skills shortage, business requirements, and social and cultural issues, and suggests that he may not dine out often enough to know the importance of good food and service from a customer’s perspective.

The art of mastering cooking professionally, especially Asian cuisine, requires at least three to five years under supervision of an experienced chef.

It is unfair to expect small businesses to have the luxury of trainees and apprentices when they are struggling to find skilled individuals to make up the core team in order for the business to operate. Most small businesses struggle to survive beyond year one, let alone wait for their team to be fully qualified.

The industry has always had a skills shortage; however expectations were far lower and the local workforce was plentiful. Due to the success and popularity of Indian cuisine we’ve seen a massive growth in the number of restaurants and takeaways opening, sourcing staff from an under-skilled, diminishing labour pool. The ever-increasing customer expectation for standards and quality has made it necessary for employers to seek staff from abroad.

I would like to know where the minister got his reasoning to lead him to believe that Asian women were seeking opportunities within the restaurant sector and being discriminated against. We as a business invite the minister to find two qualified female Asian chefs as we have two vacant posts that are in desperate need of filling.

The issues I assume the minister is trying to tackle are twofold, firstly; the issue of illegal immigration and the second the high number of unemployed women within ethnic communities.

Illegal immigration has nothing to do with restaurants seeking to employ genuine candidates. However this immigration route was abused by criminal organisations and individuals who took advantage of the incompetence of the immigration services. The industry should not be used as a scapegoat for the failing of the authorities.

The industry requires and employs genuine qualified candidates in line with border agencies criteria; these individuals are highly skilled and qualified career professionals who abide by the law and bring professionalism and development to a sector which received no funding or support from governments of the past to develop and train the future workforce.

High unemployment levels among Asian women and also their white British contemporaries from the deprived inner cities is a result of number of factors: lack of skills and qualifications, cultural inhibitions and the easy accessibility to social financial benefits. These again are not caused by the hospitality industry but are social and policy matters. The responsibility lies with government and broader society; this is not a burden that the restaurant industry should be made responsible to resolve.

The industry is largely made up of micro and small businesses set up by entrepreneurs within the field of their individual expertise which in turn creates employment for others. All businesses aim to employ individuals who can deliver a product or service in line with customer expectations. Therefore when the industry was struggling to find suitable candidates locally they had no option but to search further afield to protect their business and livelihood.

It’s far more economical to hire a local workforce as opposed to those bought over on work permits. Out of desperate necessity have employers been forced to invest massive proportions of their income to ensure their survival and to secure the skills that their business needs. It was never a question of preference to employ overseas staff over the local workforce, it is a necessity.

Before any individual can be employed from overseas, a business has to overcome many hurdles set out by the Government and faces stringent investigations into the validity of the applications and satisfy the criteria on every occasion. Although the process is both lengthy and expensive, businesses are happy to abide by it as it’s vital for their survival. These individuals enter the UK and their employment in accordance with the rules set out by the immigration department and also leave at the end of their contract.

It is a common misconception that businesses choose to employ from overseas rather than from the local workforce in order to exploit. This view is totally incorrect as the rate of pay, benefits and conditions are pre-prescribed by the UK border agency. Those specifications are often higher than what is expected for the local employee.

The overseas workforce has bought in so many benefits that the wider public is unaware and unappreciative of , i.e. these individuals pay high levels of tax (with no recourse to public funds), and they have improved and up-skilled the industry. The new skills have bought about the fantastic quality and variety that only a decade ago one would not associate with Asian cuisine and rejuvenated a withering industry to the standard worthy of Michelin recognition whilst continuing to contribute billions of pounds to the UK economy and keep tens of thousands in employment.

Employing staff from overseas was the only lifeline granted to this desperate industry that has never relied on or received support as many other sectors have. All the sector has ever asked for is that the shortages of skills are acknowledged by government and that the necessary policies are in place to support, not hinder the survival of the industry.

The industry was crippled and near collapse due to a lack of suitable and willing candidates available locally. It is unrealistic to expect more employment opportunities to be created for the local workforce by restricting the influx of overseas employees.

This sector has always been the first to be singled out whenever the Government wants to appear to be tough on immigration. The industry believes that they are an easy target for the Government’s scare-mongering and ruthless efforts to win the popular vote.

It’s very important that they make clear to the public the distinction between the “illegal immigrants” and work permit holders, I fear they are duping the public into confusing both as one.

They are trying to convince the public that they have control over the immigration problem by applying unnecessary control to those who are already fully complying. The responsibility and the blame lies solely with the Government and the Border agency as they have failed to detect and prosecute fraudulent applicants and instead are trying to penalise hard working law abiding employers and genuine applicants.

* Jabbar Khan is founder and director of Birmingham-based Lasan Restaurant Group.