If restaurants can reopen their dining rooms from Monday, they could well find themselves struggling with a shortage of staff.
Employees say the uncertainty in the industry due to the pandemic has prompted them to look elsewhere to make a living.
Milovan Danielou said he decided to look for a new job during the second closure of restaurant dining rooms in the province, in the fall of 2020, when his employer at the time, the taco restaurant Grumman ’78 , permanently closed its main location.
With dining halls closed and no tourists in town, there was little work to be done. “Everyone was struggling to find even part-time jobs,” he says.
Mr. Danielou now does data entry. His new job is less interesting, but the pay of $30 an hour is better, and he doesn’t fear losing his job if the health situation worsens.
“Nothing compares to a job in a restaurant: the adrenaline, the energy, the team, the people you meet. Nothing compares to this, he says. But that’s not enough to bring me back. I have to pay rent. We have to survive. »
The dining rooms of restaurants in Quebec have been closed as of December 30, given the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the province. Under the new rules, restaurants will be able to open Monday at 50% capacity, and there will be limits on the number of people from different households who can share a table.
Working conditions
Liam Thomas, 32, admits he would never have chosen to leave the restaurant business if he hadn’t gone through the experience of two closures.
“I was yelled at for the millionth time in my cooking career. I went out and never came back, he said in an interview. It was precipitated by the lockdowns and the belief that it could happen again. »
Thomas, who started working in restaurants at 18, now works as a transportation attendant at a Montreal hospital, helping patients get to x-rays and other appointments within the facility. . Although he admits he still misses the frenzy of the kitchen sometimes, his new job is less stressful, better paid and offers more vacations.
“The issues that the pandemic has exposed have always been there for restaurant workers,” says Kaitlin Doucette, of the Canadian Coalition of Restaurant Workers, a group advocating for better working conditions. in industry. She recalls that workers have not had health insurance or paid sick leave for a long time. The precarious nature of the work could lead to abuse and sexual harassment.
According to her, the government’s decision to close the dining rooms again has been particularly painful for the employees. The federal government only paid them $300 a week to help them.
Martin Juneau, the owner of Pastaga, a restaurant in Montreal’s Little Italy district, says he fears not finding enough staff for a reopening, which he says is the equivalent of “starting from scratch”.
“We have a lot of employees who have moved on, who wanted to change paths. They are no longer in catering or they no longer want to work with us, he says. For us, trying to restart the machine is a kind of nightmare. »
He was forced to close some other businesses, including a restaurant and wine shop, a corner grocery store and an ice cream shop, at the start of the pandemic. These businesses will remain closed, he confirms. “We are exactly the opposite of expanding. »
He is afraid of having to close his dining room again. “We fear for next fall. We are afraid of not having the energy to go to next fall. »
Decreasing hospitalizations
According to the trend observed for several days already, the number of hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 has again fallen in Quebec. And this time, it comes with a substantial reduction in the number of deaths.
According to data released by the Ministry of Health on Sunday, the number of hospitalizations rose from 2,975 to 2,895 in the past 24 hours. The authorities, however, identified 233 patients in intensive care, an increase of 2 people, while 11 new deaths were added to the death toll, or 55 less than the day before.
We now deplore 13,190 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its appearance in Quebec. Santé-Québec reports 2,838 new cases, for a total of 859,469 since the start of the pandemic.
This article was produced with the financial support of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowships.