Hard times for fast food: Labour shortage in N.L. has owners, workers struggling

This is the first instalment of Help Wanted, a three-part series by CBC Newfoundland and Labrador examining labour shortages within the province's restaurant and food service industries. 

Help Wanted signs are everywhere in Newfoundland and Labrador restaurants, with both owners and workers feeling a staffing shortage so acute it's forcing businesses to slash hours — and even full days — to cope.

Elizabeth Moss made the leap from full-time mom to small business owner in June, opening a Robin's Donuts on Torbay Road in St. John's. She knew there would be late nights and early mornings, but with a skeleton staff on hand, she said, the grind is harder than she ever expected.

"My workday — it can range anywhere from nine to 16 hours, and that's seven days a week," said Moss, who says she had one day off between June and mid-September.

Once, finding herself alone on a shift, she closed the store for a few hours. "I can't do it by myself," she said.

Her workers have "truly been phenomenal," she said. But they are mostly students and have only been able to work part time since school began, and even then are juggling schedules to help keep Robin's running

Student worker Erin O'Dell said the Robin's drive-thru can be "insane" during the breakfast and lunch rush, and needs about three people working it to get orders filled on time. "It can be hard and stressful when it's short staffed," she said.

Emma Cole, who attends Memorial University, spent one Monday at Robin's from 7 a.m. to noon, then headed off to math class and a few errands, before returning to the shop for another shift.

"It's a job. It has to be done. Just seeing how we don't have enough workers for everybody to maintain a normal part-time schedule, for me I can juggle that so I am going to come in and help where I can," Cole said.

Workdays like that are "not fair to them, or us either," said Moss, with full-time day staff in desperate short supply.

'It defies logic'

Paul Evans can commiserate, having shaved opening and closing hours off his Subway and Wingin' It franchises in Grand Falls-Windsor.

"You end up struggling, really, just to make it through some days because you're just so understaffed," he said.

This summer, he hired workers as young as 14, as they were the only ones applying. "You post a job, you get one resumé. You might get two, if you're lucky," he said.

It's a similar story at Ches's Famous Fish and Chips on Freshwater Road in St. John's, where part-time students are shouldering a big load, but not enough to make the business work as it once did.

With three employees the norm for most of this year, down from six, manager Vicki Barbour said they've stripped the menu from many items just to ease the load. "We've had to go back to basics," said Barbour. 

Morale has suffered as the shortages drag on.

"There are days that they get down, and this is why we close early. I'll say, 'I'm tired, you're tired. For the benefit of an extra two hours, why are we going to do this to ourselves, when we have tomorrow to face again?'"

Like Evans, Barbour said bringing new people on is tough. Even after someone applies, they sometimes don't want the job.

"A few weeks ago I had one person show up, I hired them, they didn't show up to the job. It defies logic," she said, adding that she's talked to other restaurants, and this "really strange phenomenon" is hitting many of them.

'The new reality'

Employers and employees looking for a little relief might not find it, one expert said.

"These are not temporary changes, I would suggest. With our demographics, this tight labour supply is the new reality," said Rob Greenwood, the executive director of Memorial University's Harris Centre, which examines economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The province's demographics continue to show people aging out of the workforce, with immigration and new entrants not high enough to stem the loss, Greenwood said.

But the pandemic has also played a role. Having sifted through labour market data, Greenwood saw shifts in certain sectors from August 2019 to August of this year, with job gains made in health and retail, and "significant drops" in accommodations and food services.

Some of that could be attributed to COVID-19, when, for example, restaurants closed but grocery stores stayed open.

"If the jobs disappear in one area, and there's a demand in another, people who need the work are going to move," he said.

Making ends meet

Some small business owners, like Evans in Grand Falls-Windsor, have seen a negative spinoff to federal government pandemic relief programs, like the Canada emergency response benefit. That program ended in October 2020, with some people carrying over into employment insurance.

"It's an attitude, of people who seem to think it's just easier to go that route and worry about it when the government funding ends," he said.

Madison O'Dell, a student who puts in part-time shifts at the Torbay Road Robin's, said CERB was unfair to those who stayed working during the height of the pandemic, and its fallout is "definitely an issue, and it needs to be figured out quickly."

Both O'Dell and her co-worker Cole say wages need to be higher in their sector.

"It would probably encourage a lot more people to work in places like fast food," Cole said.

The idea of a guaranteed annual income may be one way to support people without discouraging extra work, said Greenwood.

"The current EI system just doesn't do that," he said.

But Greenwood also said higher wages can be tough for some small businesses to manage. What they can try to do is be good managers, he said, but the shortage makes that hard too. An old truism, he said, is people don't leave their jobs but leave their bosses.

"So having good HR policies makes a big difference. If you're working as hard as you can to keep your head above water in small business, it's hard to do that."

More automation is key for any sector that can do that, he said, keeping an eye to a future in which he sees the labour shortage almost akin to climate change.

"We need policies to mitigate the demographic challenge, but I think the most important [thing] is to adapt."

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