Making it easier to hire temporary foreign workers is not a long-term solution to solve the staffing crisis facing Vancouver’s restaurants.
But making it easier for staff — including new immigrants — to get to work on public transportation is, says the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association.
“Let’s make sure we can get people from where they are living to where they are working,” Samantha Scholefield, project manager of the association’s labour market study program, said at Tuesday’s staff-shortage forum at the Italian Cultural Centre.
With Vancouver’s sky-high rents, many workers live in surrounding communities, which are more affordable. Their ability to work around a Vancouver restaurant’s hours — either early morning breakfast shifts or late night dinner shifts — is therefore constrained by Translink’s hours of operation.
In a survey, members said half of their staff members live within 15 minutes of work. However, 42 per cent of respondents had no idea of where their staff live or how long it takes them to get to work.
“We have to be more aware of how challenging that transportation piece is,” Scholefield said. Restaurants can help staff commit to shifts by working around their transportation needs.
Convincing Translink to extend its hours and encouraging the provincial government to allow ride sharing are two ways the association wants to help local restaurants avoid having to reduce hours or days of operation as a way of coping with a severe staff shortage.
As to the hoops that employers have to jump through to hire temporary foreign workers, Scholefield noted Canada will need 244,000 new immigrants to address the labour shortage over the next 10 years. Although the association is talking with the federal government about how to make the TFW program more accessible, she said the conversation has to switch to how to allow, and attract, international workers who can stay in Canada.
BCRFSA is also talking to Work BC about providing workplace translators so Syrian refugees can find jobs in the industry.
One woman asked whether we’re simply asking temporary foreign workers to come to Vancouver to be poor. Although many employers are offering $15 and $20 an hour for cooks, that’s below the living wage of $20.62.
“If we start talking living wages, we won’t have an industry,” Ian Tostenson, the association’s CEO and president, replied. “Margins are so low, you have to be really careful. A restaurant needs to have the ability to pay. For us to say we should pay $20, I know for a fact that restaurants can’t afford it and consumers won’t pay [for the increasing costs].”
He said the issues about Vancouver’s affordability are beyond the industry’s control.
That didn’t convince the woman who favoured paying living wages. Restaurant owners who don’t offer it to their staff are living their dreams off the poverty of others, she said.
Scholefield says the association has resources for such things as reducing food costs so more money can be spent on staff.
“Averaging agreements” have also been working well. Instead of working an eight-hour shift five days a week, staff agree to work four 10-hour days or three 12-hour days. She mentioned a single-operator who had a restaurant near a Skytrain stop. He introduced the longer shifts over fewer days and saved three per cent — money he used to increase wages to attract and keep staff.
An added benefit was that when he called staff to ask if they’d work an extra shift, they were more likely to say yes if they knew they still had two days off.
