Good morning. David Meyer here in Berlin, filling in for Alan.
The U.K.’s labor shortage has become a major issue, with its effects becoming apparent on store shelves and elsewhere.
As Adrian Croft writes in this piece for Fortune, fruit is rotting in fields because there aren’t enough workers to pick it, supermarkets have had diaper- and water shortages and McDonald’s has had milkshake shortages because of a shortage of truck drivers, and auto-makers have had to pause production due to the semiconductor crunch and the effects of workers isolating after coming into contact with COVID-infected people.
There are clearly many factors coming together to fuel the situation, which could end up crimping the U.K.’s economic recovery if it doesn’t clear up soon. The chip shortage and quarantines can be attributed to the pandemic and its unpredictable effects, but Brexit’s effect on the labor market was anything but unpredictable. Brits wanted the Europeans who pick their fruit and drive their trucks to go home, and they did.
Earlier this month, the British Retail Consortium and industry body Logistics U.K. begged the government to grant temporary visas to EU truck drivers. On Saturday, the government refused. “We want to see employers make long-term investments in the U.K. domestic workforce instead of relying on labor from abroad,” a spokesperson told Reuters. “The industry needs drivers now,” retorted Logistics U.K. public policy chief Alex Veitch.
Brexit was in many ways a gamble. In fairness to its advocates, few predicted it would occur in the context of a pandemic—though it can also be said that, particularly these days, those calling for radical changes should bear in mind the possibility of black swans interfering with their plans. But many, many voices warned that Brexit would hit the U.K. labor market. They were accused of participating in “Project Fear.” But they were not wrong.
On a lighter note, do read Alexandra Petri’s satirical Washington Post column about companies trying to coax workers back to the office, if only for this glorious line: “‘You’ve got to come back to the Office,’ they told me. ‘It’s full of bees.'”
More news below.
David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Booster shots
A study in Israel, where particularly at-risk people have been given third COVID-19 vaccine doses for the last month, suggests the boosters have significantly curbed infections by the Delta variant of the coronavirus. "Our findings give clear indications of the effectiveness of a booster dose even against the currently dominant delta variant," said the researchers. Fortune
China vaccines
A large-scale Brazilian study shows China's Sinovac is much worse at protecting elderly (over 80) people from the Gamma variant than AstraZeneca/Oxford is. The country is rolling out boosters for immunocompromised people and those over 70, but it is not including Sinovac. Meanwhile, China is reportedly being deliberately slow in authorizing foreign vaccines for fear that their approval could undermine confidence in homegrown alternatives such as Sinovac. Wall Street Journal
Alibaba scandal
Alibaba has fired 10 employees who publicly shared screenshots of a colleague's account of an alleged rape by a manager, originally posted to an internal company forum. The accused manager has also been dismissed and two senior executives have resigned. The company says it had to fire the 10 workers, because it has strict rules about exposing content that was posted on internal forums. Fortune
Hurricane Ida
Hurricane Ida's assault on New Orleans yesterday could leave the city without power and air conditioning for over three weeks. Thus says utility Entergy Corp, whose infrastructure has taken a major battering. Bloomberg
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Worker pay
Rick Wartzman, head of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society at the Drucker Institute, writes for Fortune that the Business Roundtable produced a "confusing, if not downright misleading" data point to show that its members were investing in their workers by paying them well. "As corporations find themselves under increasing pressure to prove that they are serving the interests not just of their shareholders but also those of their customers, employees, suppliers, and the communities in which they operate, a bunch of statistics are being thrown about," he writes. "A lot of them are pretty junky." Fortune
Chief Heat Officer
Athens now has a chief heat officer, Eleni Myrivili, who is the first person in Europe to have such a role. As Stelios Bouras writes for Fortune: "Athens faces a bleak future unless it can mitigate its climate problem. If air quality were to deteriorate further, the fear is a future with fewer tourists and an exodus of Greeks to live and work elsewhere." Fortune
Russian racism
Neo-fascists complained when a Russian sushi delivery chain ran an ad featuring a Black man…so the chain, YobiDoyobi, removed the ad and apologized. Moscow Times
Against 996
China's top court says the tech sector's "996" culture—working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—is illegal. As Fortune's Grady McGregor reports: "For China’s government the optics of a populist push may be as important as how the ban on 996 will be enforced. Cracking down on 996 culture is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s broader campaign to reduce inequality in Chinese society and limit the power of the nation’s largest tech companies." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
