Have you asked the 80,000 qualified HGV drivers in this country that aren't driving if they stopped driving because of Brexit? Or could it be because it's expensive to get into, and underpaid?
A situation that has existed for years. However, these food shortages are recent. So what recently happened that could have caused them to happen now?
Also, shutting everything down for the pandemic DID have an impact on how many drivers there are. Not that they weren't necessary but the impact is not zero:
Opening everything up caused a greater demand on a much-diminished supply of drivers. More places now need delivering to.
The driver shortage existed before Brexit also per the article I linked:
There is a shortage of 76,000 HGV drivers in the UK, according to a report from ITV in 2020. This figure had grown from 59,000 in 2019 - showing the ever-growing demand for qualified truck drivers, who are desperately needed to keep goods moving across the UK and Europe.
And it exists in Europe too:
The lack of truck drivers appears throughout Europe. Germany has 45,000 truck driving vacancies, and the DSLV Transport Union has explained that two-thirds of all German lorry drivers could retire within 15 years.
Obviously not to the same scale but the same issues exist here:
The UK has an ageing truck driver workforce, with an average age of 48 years old. 47% of drivers are over 50, and only 1% are under 25. A negative industry image that includes poor working conditions, average wages and an uninspiring career path, is putting off younger generations from becoming HGV drivers – meaning there is a lack of new operators joining the sector.
These haulage companies could have prevented this shortage in the first place had they offered competitive wages and work conditions over the past 10 years:
https://www.smmt.co.uk/2021/07/what-can-be-done-to-tackle-the-uks-truck-driver-shortage/
Driver Require, a driver agency based in Stevenage, estimates that over the past decade about 150,000 of the new HGV drivers under the age of 40 who have passed their test have subsequently left truck driving in pursuit of an alternative career.
Casually dropping thousands on something only to ditch it because it's shite. Must be an event that came to fruition just over a year ago that caused this problem /s
And according to the same article, the deficit has actually shrunk 2020-2021 compared to the report cited above which stated 76,000:
The UK is currently suffering from an estimated deficit of about 65,000 HGV drivers but what is behind the shortage and what can be done to increase the numbers entering the industry?
Frankly I see this as both greed on the part of the large hauliers and supermarkets supressing wages and food margins, and another symptom of the nonsensical belief in infinite growth. Maybe we just have to accept that next day delivery isn't possible? As for 'food supplies on the verge of failing' like some scaremongers are claiming, it's completely blown out of proportion - even the supermarkets have said so.
We're fully in agreement about labour however we seem to disagree about the source of this issue. We have far too many middlemen in our society, lots of them doing nothing other than moving money from A to B. And we have grown accustomed to things that are now showing to be unsustainable from both a labour perspective, and an ecological perspective.
Also regarding immigrants being more productive, perhaps we should look at why productivity has been depressed in this country and also why wages and productivity haven't been correlated for over 50 years, I suspect they're highly related, rather than why people that can take a pittance here back to their home country where it is not a pittance may be more motivated than others.