Why Eastern European Truckers Are Not Considering Returning to the UK

[ad_1]

After 14 years working as a truck driver in the UK, Zsolt Gabor hung up his keys at the end of March and returned to Hungary for good.

Conditions had become unbearable during the coronavirus pandemic, which, with the effects of Brexit, left at least 90,000 truck drivers short of Britain, manifested in growing supply chain problems.

Gabor said the shortage of drivers and problems finding a return flight to Hungary due to the pandemic restrictions actually meant his last shift in the UK lasted three months with only minimal breaks. mandatory. He has never been away for more than 45 hours.

At the height of the pandemic, that meant his truck taxi was his home. The last straw came when a police officer ordered him to return to his truck citing lockdown restrictions. “I wasn’t even allowed to walk around at the end of my shift,” he said. With back pain and a family waiting in Hungary, Gabor decided he had had enough.

Logistics UK, the professional body for transporters, said Britain had suffered from a chronic shortage of drivers for many years, but the problem was now acute. Industry leaders have called on the government to add heavy truck drivers to its list of shortage occupations, which would give foreign carriers an exemption from post-Brexit immigration rules that prevent them from being hired.

Zsolt Gabor from Hungary worked for 14 years as a truck driver but quit at the end of March and returned home

The government has not completely ruled out taking action, but at the end of last month business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng wrote to business leaders urging them to hire UK-based workers instead, stressing that foreign labor offered only a “short-term, temporary solution”.

Even if an exemption were granted, it seems unlikely that many who have left the UK will return so easily. The Financial Times spoke to dozens of Eastern European heavy truck drivers who previously worked in Britain but went to work elsewhere.

Many cite similar stories of poor working conditions to quit smoking, but other reasons include poor wages made worse by a tax reform, known as IR35, which has kept most drivers from operating as corporations. anonymous, resulting in a significant reduction in take-home pay.

Add to that Brexit. For truckers, it meant endless paperwork, including customs procedures they had never been trained in and queues at the border. The need to take driving exams in UK, most have no language skills and a more hostile attitude towards foreigners in Britain.

In addition, Europe as a whole lacks truckers. “This is a global driver shortage across Europe, not an isolated problem of one country,” said Zsolt Barna, managing director of Waberer’s, one of the world’s largest carriers. Eastern Europe based in Budapest.

Some EU member states are proportionately worse off than the UK, stressed Barna, including Romania, a key source of truckers for the UK over the years, which out of a population of 20 million inhabitants, shortage of 20,000 drivers.

For EU drivers who have left but still have the right to return and live in the UK, the prospects for higher pay some UK companies are now offering were not enough. Many said they have already found work elsewhere with higher wages and in a better working environment.

Peter Kovecs, another Hungarian, spent two years in England. After inheriting the family farm he came to the UK to earn money to reinvest in the business and had planned to stay longer. But after his experience, he said nothing would tempt him to return.

Zsolt Barna, Managing Director of Waberer’s, one of the largest carriers in Eastern Europe © Zsolt Nyulaszi

“They intimidated us as the drivers kept coming,” Kovecs said. “Now they are begging us. Once he saved £ 60,000 he decided to go home even though it was below his goal. “I will never stay there again. I love England, it’s a big country, I’ll take the family there one day, but for work, the way they treat people? Never again.”

Krzysztof, who declined to give his last name, worked for four years in the UK before returning to Poland in 2020. His wife got pregnant and they decided they wanted the child to be raised in their country. native country.

He now drives trucks in Poland and Germany and has no plans to return to the UK for good, even though the pay was better. He said the IR35 was the last straw for him and for many Polish pilots he knew.

“From what I know, many pilots have returned [to Poland] because they could no longer work as independent contractors. Most of the people I know [in the UK] want to come back, invest their money in Poland, ”he said.

In contrast, after living in the UK for eight years, where he mainly worked in warehouses, Jakub Burzykowski intended to return after returning to Poland to obtain a heavy truck license.

“I have heard that salaries [of truck drivers] in the UK were great and there was a shortage of drivers so there shouldn’t be a problem finding a job, ”he said.

But upon his return earlier this year, he was refused entry and expelled due to confusion over his right to work in the UK, known as settlement status in the EU. He is now working in Germany. “What would make Polish drivers choose the UK over Germany? Simplified visa procedures. From what I read there was some pressure on the UK government to simplify it, but they said no.

He added: “I really wanted to work in the UK, I have friends and part of my family lives there. . . I miss it.”

Dan Myers, managing director for UK and Ireland transport at XPO Logistics, has urged the government to reconsider adding truck drivers to the list of shortage occupations. “As a short-term interim solution, this is a sensible and pragmatic way,” he said.

The introduction of the IR35 tax changes would have been the last straw for many Polish drivers © Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg

But Kieran Smith, managing director of Driver Require, a recruiting agency, disagreed. “If we are working on the basis of returning foreign workers as a solution, then we are seriously misguided,” he said, noting that it was better to focus on the return of some of the 300,000 Britons holding a allowed heavy goods vehicles but who have resigned.

He pointed to data from the Office for National Statistics which showed that at the start of the pandemic, around 40,000 of the 300,000 truck drivers in the UK were from the EU. By the end of March 2021, that number had halved to around 20,000, but around 5,000 had returned since April.

The ONS also found that 50,000 UK-based drivers had left the profession since the start of the pandemic, mostly those over the age of 45. realized they didn’t want to go back to it at their age, ”he said.

For Gabor, his decision to stop trucking prompted him to recruit drivers in Hungary after his former British employer asked him for help finding a replacement. Ultimately, although post-Brexit immigration rules meant that his agency, RightDriver, ended up focusing on Ireland.

He started using drivers in non-EU Balkan states, including Serbia and North Macedonia, and said if they couldn’t work in Ireland they would be available for work. UK. “They would just have to lift the restrictions already.”

Additional reporting by Harry Dempsey

[ad_2]