US Business

Germany has a shortage of plumbers. The United States needs more postal workers. Australia is lacking engineers. In Canada, hospitals are looking for more nurses. 

“The Great Resignation” that countries have experienced since Covid pandemic restrictions were eased is not over yet.

Michael Blume, chief executive of a software company in eastern Germany, said he had “a lot of difficulties finding workers”.

“Wherever we look, we are lacking qualified workers,” Blume, whose firm Currentsystem23 is based in eastern Germany, told AFP.

There were 887,000 job vacancies in Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — in August, some 108,000 openings more than last year.

“Help Wanted” signs are plastered in front of restaurants and other businesses in the United States, where there were more than 11 million job openings in late July, or two for every employment seeker.

“Vacancy rates are very high across the world. Surveys and firms are saying it is still very hard to fill positions,” said Ariane Curtis, a Toronto-based economist at research firm Capital Economics. 

Countries in Western Europe and North America are having a particularly tough time filling jobs, though the problem is also present in eastern Europe, Turkey and Latin America, Curtis said.

Vacancy-to-unemployed rates rose sharply in Australia, Canada and Britain in later 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels, an OECD report said in July.

– Businesses closing early –

The shortages have persisted even as the world economy has begun to slow since Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year.

It affects a broad range of sectors: from a lack of teachers in Texas to not enough staff in the hospitality industry in Italy or the Canadian health system.

The shortages have forced businesses to adapt.

Pharmacies in the US state of Wisconsin, services at hospitals in Canada’s province of Alberta and restaurants in Australia’s Sunshine Coast have had to close for parts of the day, according to local news reports.

White-collar workers are also in short supply.

Clement Verrier, who co-heads an executive recruiting firm in Paris, said it used to be difficult to find companies looking to hire. Now it’s the opposite. 

“We’re seeing an unprecedented number of candidates who disappear in the middle of the recruitment process, without calling back,” Verrier said.

– ‘Shift in mindset’ –

Aging populations were already starting to cause shortages before Covid, but the problem exploded with the pandemic.

There are multiple factors behind the phenomenon: some people have chosen to retire early, while others have struggled with long Covid symptoms. Others have simply had enough of poor working conditions or low salaries.

Other factors include a drastic drop in immigration due to lockdowns, people moving out of cities and workers seizing the moment to rethink their career choices.

“The pandemic drove a fundamental shift in mindset and priorities, and employers aren’t keeping pace with that change,” said Bonnie Dowling, expert associate partner at McKinsey, a global consultancy that conducted a study on the wave of resignations around the world.

To keep or woo workers, companies are offering higher salaries. Other benefits that have emerged include the option of working from home, “bonus” holidays and more personal days.

Some countries are easing their immigration rules to attract more workers.

Germany unveiled plans Wednesday to make it easier for people to hold multiple nationalities and make naturalisation of foreigners easier.

“The big question is if what we have seen in the last months will cool down or not,” said Mike Smith, CEO of Netherlands-based international recruiter Randstad Sourceright.

“From our position we don’t believe it is transitory,” he said.

“We think it is a structural change in the way employees are looking to interact with work. Trends continue to point to that. The shift in worker expectations is here to stay.”

Isolated in the vast prairies of west-central Canada, the James Smith Cree Nation — epicenter of a deadly stabbing rampage — is a small Indigenous community that is no stranger to drama.

Like many other Indigenous communities in North America, it suffers from such problems as overcrowded housing, high unemployment, drug addiction and racial discrimination, researchers say.

– Small, isolated community

Located in a territory spanning more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) the community’s central village is in a rural area where people live off farming and ranching. 

Some 3,400 members of the Cree tribe — one of Canada’s First Nations — live in this area including 2,000 in the village itself. 

On Sunday the community suffered inexplicable tragedy when nine people there were stabbed to death in an outburst of attacks whose motive remains unknown. Another person was killed in the nearby town of Weldon.

Two brothers were identified as the suspects. One was found dead Monday, and news reports said the second died of self inflicted wounds after being arrested on Wednesday, ending the manhunt.

Half of the Cree village’s population is less than 24 years of age and the jobless rate is 24 percent amid low living standards, according to figures from the 2016 census.

Housing is a huge problem: nearly two-thirds of the homes need major repairs and about a third are overcrowded.

– Violence, disasters – 

Almost a year ago to the day, the James Smith community was rocked by a shooting that left two people dead and one wounded.

Several times since 2012 hundreds of people have had to be evacuated from the reservation because of flooding.

In 2016, a leak from oil pipeline contaminated the river that provided the village’s water source. The people of the village sued the provincial and federation governments but nothing came of it.

– Trauma of residential schools- 

The village also included people who spent time at now-notorious schools for Indigenous children.

Between the late 19th century and the 1990s, some 150,000 Indigenous youths in Canada were forced to attend these schools, cut off from their families, languages and culture.

Many of them suffered physical or sexual abuse and thousands never came home from the schools, dying of sickness, malnutrition or negligence.

The Canadian government eventually labeled this cultural genocide and the scars from the tragedy still haunt many Indigenous Canadians.

In late April the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Church, visited the James Smith Cree Nation to meet with people who survived their time at the schools. In the name of the church, the archbishop apologized for the abuse meted out at the schools.

Even today Indigenous people suffer from “overt, covert and systemic racism,” said Robert Henry, a professor of Indigenous studies at the University Saskatchewan. 

In 2020, the United Nations denounced what it called a broad range of abuse suffered by Indigenous people, such as problems accessing drinking water, discrimination against children living on reserves, disproportionate presence of Indigenous people in prison, and other woes.

– Drug problems – 

As in many Indigenous communities of Saskatchewan province, drug abuse is a problem, said Marie-Pierre Bousquet, director of the Indigenous studies program at the University of Montreal.

“These are rather big territories with not much of a presence by police who are often overwhelmed, and drugs flow pretty freely,” said Bousquet, adding that violence often comes hand in hand with drug trafficking.

The day after the stabbing attacks Bobby Cameron, the head of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, blamed “harmful illegal drugs (that) invade our communities.”

Authorities in New York announced Wednesday the return of 16 antiquities to Egypt, including five works that were seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a probe into international art trafficking.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the 16 works were worth more than $16 million. He spoke a day after announcing a similar return of 58 artworks to Italy.

“Today’s repatriation shows the breadth and prevalence of antiquities trafficking networks,” Bragg said in a statement.

Nine of the pieces had been in the possession of Michael Steinhardt, whom Bragg described as one of the world’s largest collectors of ancient art.

In 2021, Steinhardt was forced by US authorities to return 180 stolen ancient artworks worth a total of $70 million.

Under that deal he avoided going to jail but was banned for life from acquiring antiquities in the legal market.

Five other pieces were seized in May and June from the Met, worth $3.1 million, as part of a probe carried out by US and French authorities and under which former Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez was charged in France.

Those five pieces had been looted from archeological sites in Egypt, smuggled through Germany or the Netherlands to France, and sold by the Paris-based Pierre Berge & Associes to the Met, Bragg said.

“The information developed and shared by the Manhattan DA’s office with law-enforcement agencies around the world related to this investigation has led to the indictment or arrest of nine individuals in France, including the former Louvre Director Jean-Luc Martinez,” Bragg said.

A US judge ruled Wednesday in favor of Christian employers who refuse, on religious grounds, to provide workers with health insurance that covers the cost of drugs that help prevent HIV/AIDS.

District Judge Reed O’Connor of a Texas federal court, known for making several rulings hostile to former president Barack Obama’s sweeping health care law, took aim at a new aspect of the legislation nicknamed Obamacare.

The law requires private insurers to reimburse certain preventive care as defined by health authorities. In 2020, they included PrEP — pills that act to prevent HIV transmission.

Two companies and several individuals went to court to challenge the coverage of the drugs, saying it violates their religious beliefs by making them “complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior,” O’Connor said in his decision.

One of the plaintiffs was facing fines of $100 per employee per day for failing to comply with the Obamacare law, said the judge, who ruled that the requirement to reimburse the cost of PrEP pills violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration will likely appeal the ruling.

“The administration is reviewing today’s decision by the Northern District of Texas,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter, noting that the Affordable Care Act “has been the law of the land for over 10 years.”

The Texas decision was strongly criticized by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

“This disturbing decision amounts to open homophobia,” Pelosi, a Biden ally, said in a statement.

PrEP, short for pre-exposure prophylaxis, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2012 and is now routinely recommended for high-risk people who are HIV-negative to prevent them from becoming infected.

When taken daily, PrEP reduces the risk of infection by 99 percent, but only 23 percent of people who could benefit from it were using the medicine in 2019.

Britain’s Cineworld, the world’s second biggest cinema chain, announced Wednesday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States as it seeks to restructure after facing low audience numbers.

The group, which operates hundreds of movie theatres in the United States, said in a statement that it filed for Chapter 11 at a bankruptcy court in Texas.

Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code is a court-supervised restructuring process that provides companies time to negotiate with its creditors to reach a settlement on the reduction of debts.

Cineworld said it “will seek to implement a de-leveraging transaction that will significantly reduce the Group’s debt, strengthen its balance sheet and provide the financial strength and flexibility to accelerate, and capitalise on, Cineworld’s strategy in the cinema industry.”

The statement said it hoped to emerge from bankruptcy proceedings in the first quarter of next year, and had $1.94 billion in financing from existing lenders to help it through that period.

The company also warned existing shareholders that their holdings would likely be considerably diluted as part of the bankruptcy process.

Eric Snyder, a bankruptcy expert at Wilk Auslander, said Cineworld’s creditors aren’t giving them “a lot of time to make the decision between reorganizing or selling it”. 

A big problem for the company is that “travelling to a movie theatre to watch a movie for two to three hours, and spending $20 to $25, is just not attractive anymore for a lot of people, especially young people,” Snyder added.

Cineworld’s shares had been sliding since the beginning of the year as the company’s position deteriorated when people didn’t return to cinemas in droves after Covid lockdowns were eased.

They plummeted last month when the company acknowledged it was considering filing for bankruptcy.

Cineworld shares rose 10 percent on Wednesday to 4.29 pence, but were still down 87 percent from the start of the year.

Analysts argue that Cineworld’s 2018 takeover of American peer Regal left it saddled with too much debt, putting it in a poor position to weather the pandemic.

An American mother was killed by a shark while snorkeling with her family in the Bahamas on a sideline excursion during their cruise, authorities said Wednesday.

The 58-year-old woman from the US state of Pennsylvania was attacked Tuesday afternoon in the waters of Green Cay, near the Bahamian capital Nassau, according to Bahamian police.

“Tour operators along with family members attempted to rescue the female,” police said in a statement.

“However, they were unsuccessful; which resulted in the female receiving serious injuries to the left side of her body.”

When she was brought to land, paramedics found she showed “no vital signs of life,” police added.

The family of five arrived early Tuesday in the Bahamas as part of a seven-night cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean International ship Harmony of the Seas.

The family was participating in what the cruise industry calls an “independent shore excursion,” not sponsored or organized by the cruise line.

Royal Caribbean, in confirming the death, said the company was “providing support and assistance” to the victim’s family.

In 2019, a young American woman died after being attacked by three sharks during a family dive in the same area of the Bahamas.