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More than three quarters of restaurant and hotel owners say they’ve had to work longer hours because they couldn’t hire enough staff.
Restaurant and hotel operators across Quebec are feeling the squeeze as Omicron exacerbates an already worrisome labour shortage.
Seventy-nine per cent of Quebec hotel and restaurant owners say they’ve had to work longer hours as a result of the workforce scarcity, while 70 per cent said their employees have been working overtime, according to a new member poll conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Many establishments have also had to curtail opening hours because they can’t find enough staff, with 48 per cent of restaurant owners who answered the poll saying they’ve had to turn down business due to personnel issues.
“Finding people is virtually impossible these days, which is why we can no longer open at lunchtime,” Olivier de Montigny, chef owner of Laurier Ave.’s La Chronique restaurant, said Friday in an interview. La Chronique now operates four nights a week, down from five nights and four middays a week before the pandemic.
“A few weeks ago, I posted a job opening for a cook that paid about $20 an hour. One person applied,” de Montigny said. “A lot of the big hotels are now in recruiting mode, which makes it hard for small restaurants like ours to compete.”
Construction is another industry that’s been hit particularly hard by the labour scarcity.
Sixty-seven per cent of small businesses in the sector have had to turn down sales and contracts because they don’t have enough staff to perform the work, the CFIB poll found. Sixty-five per cent of construction business owners said they’ve had to put in longer hours, while half of respondents said they’ve also had to resort to employee overtime.
All told, 63 per cent of Quebec small business executives polled said they’re working more because of the current labour situation. Another 39 per cent said they’ve had to refuse some contracts….Readmore
