Bye, Guest Workers

Immigrant workers in the U.S. and abroad, critical to the restaurant industry, are finding a more difficult work environment in host countries thanks to rising unemployment rates—a fact that could hinder sales at international quick-serves whose customers rely on funds sent home by relatives working in impacted countries.

In late January, Malaysian authorities announced that foreign workers from Indonesia and elsewhere were no longer welcome as the government attempted to protect citizens from job losses. South Korea has instituted a large-scale crackdown on illegal aliens. And in Spain, Spanish nationals were working their own fields during the harvest, a trend that has not occurred in more than a decade.

Already the depressed economy and anti-immigrant sentiment is serving as a deterrent to would-be newcomers. An apparent slowdown in the participation of foreign-born workers in the global labor force and the subsequent impact of their declining income on home markets could have a ripple effect on the fast-food sector in markets around the world.

“There’s kind of a policy of national preference in terms of hiring,” says Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which tracks worker movement around the world. The group estimates there are about 200 million international migrants working globally, accounting for 3 percent of the world’s population.

Source:
Bye, Guest Workers
qsrmagazine.com