The furious entrepreneur lamented the unwillingness of English workers to apply for work at his coffee shop because they are “too lazy”. Tottenham’s Gianni burst into battle over the struggles businesses have faced since then Brexit to fill their vacancies while struggling to attract local workers to apply. Speaking to LBC, he said: “I can’t find staff to fill the vacancies. Since Covid I have struggled to find staff.
“Unfortunately, as an English person born in England but with an Italian background, the English people are too lazy to do this kind of work.
“I have a coffee shop in Westminster, I have some of your presenters coming in, a lot of MPs are customers coming in.
“But the English natives don’t want to do this kind of work – they want to do office work, work from home, 9 to 5 or 9 to 4. Easy life, easy jobs.”
Asked if Brexit further complicated the situation, Gianni noted that ending the freedom of movement and introducing new visa requirements, which exclude his company, made it more difficult to hire workers.
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He continued: “Of course. And now the government is making it even harder for people to come here to settle and look for a job.
“I had a waitress come to me, she had training, she’d done everything, ‘can you start tomorrow?’ and she said, ‘I can’t start working, I don’t have an arrangement.’
“You look at the site for settlement, I am not eligible as an employee to help these people.
“If I want to help them, I can’t do that. It has to be an industry that fits the way the government does things.”
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And overnight economics adviser Sacha Lord called for easing visa rules to ease entry for international boarding staff.
Mr Lord said: “The right to work and live in the UK is now significantly more restricted for EU citizens.
“This is a challenge that significantly affects employers and creates a relentless employment gap in an industry already ravaged by debt burdens and weakened consumer spending.
“We have not yet seen a realistic or pragmatic approach to contain this recruitment crisis, despite numerous warnings from the hospitality industry that this crisis would not only come to fruition, but also escalate after Covid.”