This autumn there will be pricked again, but by whom? A new vaccination campaign against corona will start in September. Everyone from the age of twelve can then get a repeat shot at the local GGD, Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) recently announced. The GGD is currently looking for thousands of people to administer the expected 700,000 injections per week.
This creates unrest in an already tight labor market. Catering establishments, shops and travel organizations fear that they will ‘lose’ staff to the municipal health services, while they are already unable or barely able to complete their occupation. There are currently 133 vacancies for every 100 unemployed. The GGDs need more than 13,000 extra people to make the operation run smoothly, a spokesperson said.
That search has a “disruptive” effect on the labor market, says a spokesperson for industry organization INretail. “We fish in the same pond. They are looking for functions as host or hostess, for example young people and students. Those are people who could also be in the store.”
The period in which the GGDs start testing are also the busiest months for shopkeepers. October, November, December, these are the months in which a lot of turnover is made, partly due to holidays such as Sinterklaas. The trade association fears that with the current staff shortages it will already be “difficult to keep stores open”.
According to the trade association, the GGD pays more to its staff on average than shopkeepers. That makes it difficult to compete, according to INretail.
Tax money
Trade association Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) is even more adamant and speaks of “unfair competition”. Of course, says chairman Robèr Willemsen, catering entrepreneurs must ensure “that people would rather work with us than in such a vaccination tent”. But he thinks it is unjustified that GGD staff are “paid heavily from our tax money”. If the catering industry starts to pay ‘such prices’, ‘consumer prices will become huge’.
There are no figures about the average wage of GGD employees. This is because ‘the’ GGD does not exist, they are 25 independent organizations that are themselves responsible for their business operations and therefore for recruiting staff. In theory, an employee who answers telephone calls for the GGD in Breda can earn more than someone who does the same work in Almere. The GGDs are also looking for a variety of different people: for administrative work, to administer the injections, to answer questions by telephone, to manage traffic at vaccination locations.
Also, not everyone who reports to a GGD automatically earns far above the minimum wage, a round of vacancies at employment agencies shows. The position of customer service employee at the GGD in Amsterdam pays 10.28 euros per hour. That is just above the current minimum hourly wage for a 40-hour working week: EUR 10.14. Prickers earn more: at the GGD in Haarlem 16.54 euros per hour. And an administrative assistant in Waalwijk can start earning 13 euros per hour. That is not counted without any evening or Sunday surcharges.
Decent pay
“The government just has to pay a decent wage,” said a spokesperson for the umbrella organization GGD GHOR. Wage, which he believes is ultimately not decisive in job choice: motivation would be more important for many young people. “They can do socially relevant work at the GGDs.” He says he understands the concerns of catering entrepreneurs and shopkeepers, but emphasizes that GGDs themselves are also trying to find staff in a tight labor market.
In addition, he says: during the coronalockdowns, many people who could no longer work in the catering industry could go to the GGD. Staff left the sector in particular during the second (late 2020) and third (end 2021) lockdowns, ABN Amro’s economic bureau noted this spring in a publication about the catering industry. In March this year, more people went to work in the catering industry than left the sector. This was “probably due to a combination of the phasing out of ‘corona jobs’ (test centers, GGD, etc.) and higher starting salaries,” according to the research agency. KHN chairman Willemsen also saw many people return. But it’s not enough yet. “We had a staff shortage before the corona crisis.”
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Personnel who will work at the GGD are not ‘lost’, argues the spokesperson. “By vaccinating people in the autumn, we also prevent people from getting sick from corona.” This also combats the staff shortage.