UK trucker crisis ‘confirms’ warnings about speed of Brexit process

Published on: 09/27/2021 – 9:14 PMAmended: 09/27/2021 – 9:15 PM

The UK truck driver shortage hit a tipping point on September 27 – as hoarding depleted thousands of service stations and plentiful supplies of fuel were stranded at terminals and refineries, while the government suspended the competition law on oil companies in an attempt to alleviate the emergency.

The British government says the coronavirus was the main factor behind the crisis. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News on Friday that Covid’s social distancing measures disrupting the training of truck drivers was the “main reason” for the shortage – not Brexit. Shapps noted that Germany and Poland are also running low on truck drivers due to the pandemic.

Figures from the Road Haulage Association suggest Shapps was right about the coronavirus: The industry group says 40,000 truck driver training tests were canceled due to repeated blockages in 2020 and early 2021.

“Clearly, the pandemic has had a negative effect on the supply of new drivers,” observed Jacob Kirkegaard, senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC and the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund.

Emergency visas

However, given that the problem is much more acute in Britain than in Germany or Poland, many observers have pointed to Brexit as a major cause of the crisis. Reinforcing their case, the Road Haulage Association said 20,000 European truck drivers have quit their jobs in the UK because of Brexit.

Before Brexit went into effect on New Years Day 2021, freedom of movement meant that EU truck drivers could simply arrive in the UK and find a job. But as soon as the UK left the single market, new immigration rules made it more difficult for EU workers in low-wage industries like truck driving to move to Britain.

Brexit is “part” of the problem along with “other factors” such as the coronavirus, said David Henig, a former UK trade negotiator, now UK director of the European Center for International Political Economy in Brussels.

“Some people who drive trucks from Europe no longer do so because of the barriers that have been put up. [thanks to Brexit]; others have returned home due to the coronavirus crisis, ”continued Henig.

Brexit has ‘amplified’ the UK’s shortage of truck drivers by creating embarrassing trade friction between the UK and the EU, making Britain ‘less attractive’ to European truck drivers, Elvire Fabry added , specialist in European economy at the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.

“Changing the economic system takes years”

As the trucker crisis escalated, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government partially reversed its post-Brexit immigration policy – announcing on Saturday its intention to issue 5,000 three-month visas from October to foreign truckers in order to ‘try to prevent any disruption of Christmas plans.

This temporary turnaround points to a snag in the Johnson government’s post-Brexit economic strategy of encouraging employers in low-wage sectors to train British workers and pay them more instead of recruiting cheap labor to abroad.

While denying any effect of Brexit behind the crisis, Transport Secretary Shapps pointed to a longer term factor behind the current crisis, admitting that truck drivers in the UK have been ‘underpaid’ and suggesting that wages higher are needed in this work.

The Conservative Party has embraced a paradigm shift from laissez-faire economic policy since the 2016 Brexit referendum – a shift intensified by Tories who won swathes of working-class constituencies in northern England from the Labor in the 2019 polls. “Upgrading” the economy of the north of England with that of the more prosperous south is Johnson’s priority until the next general election.

Along with increased state intervention in the economy, Britain’s new, more restrictive immigration policy is a key part of this approach – aimed at encouraging higher wages by ensuring that the supply of labor is of work does not exceed demand.

This radical change in economic policy follows a swift implementation of a hard Brexit, motivated by public weariness in the face of the never-ending divorce saga: the shutdown of the single market came a little over a year later Johnson’s election victory in December 2019, when it finally became clear that Brexit was a certainty.

Experts say the speed of the Brexit process is undermining Tory plans to create a new business model – and the trucker crisis proves it par excellence.

In truck driving, as in other low-wage industries, “it takes time and a lot of investment to create the skills and attractive conditions to develop the necessary domestic workforce,” said Fabry.

“The speed of the Brexit process is definitely an issue; people have long warned that after Brexit there would not be enough time to train replacement drivers, pandemic or no pandemic, ”added Kirkegaard. “The UK industry has relied for many years on a lot of workers coming especially from low income members of the EU and as a result UK drivers have not been trained – but that was the business model British at large for many years. “

Brexit did not have to contribute to a crisis like this; the problem was its rushed implementation, Kirkegaard concluded: It means a paradigm shift – and if you’re going to fundamentally change your economic system, it takes years.