Help (still) wanted: Ongoing ‘worker shortage’ impeding businesses

C&C Wings celebrated its 25th anniversary with a big party on July 14, 2021, just one day before its 26th anniversary.

Delaying the celebration by 364 days was a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc on C&C Wings, with its two locations in Brownsville, along with just about every other business everywhere. The much-reported “worker shortage” has been an enduring legacy of the pandemic and is still creating headaches for employers.

The restaurant, which opened its main location at 6550 Ruben Torres Blvd. in 1995, endured pandemic restrictions but is still struggling to get back to normal operating hours and staffing, according to owner Lori Indridson, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., birthplace of the Buffalo wing. When she was forced to close C&C Wings’ 2034 Central Blvd. Location, the restaurant became a poster child of sorts for the great worker shortage.

“We went to limited hours back in, I believe, May of 2020,” she said. “Then we were closed just Monday and Tuesday. And then it was like, OK, we can open 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. but we were still open five days a week. And then it just got to the point where, OK, I don’t have enough people. I have to keep this (Ruben Torres) location open. This is our main location. So I had to sacrifice that location because this one obviously brings in more revenue and keeps more people employed.”

Conventional wisdom held that the worker shortage would evaporate once people spent their federal pandemic relief payments and extended unemployment benefits, aimed at helping keep households afloat during the worst of the public health emergency, but it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Indridson admitted she’s surprised.

“We used to have 28 to 30 employees when we were open full time both places,” she said. “Now if I have 16 I’m lucky. … I’ve been working harder the last two years than I did the 10 previous years, because I actually had to do kitchen shifts and stuff like that. I talk to guys like Hector (Burnias) at the Flying Pig, and he’s, like, I’m working three days in the kitchen. George (Perez) from the Vermillion said the same thing, in the kitchen a couple days a week.”

At the same time, “now hiring” signs are everywhere, Indridson observed, adding that she learned the hard way the value of hiring on the spot in the current job climate. A man who had worked at the restaurant when he was a teenager, 25 years ago, came in looking for a job. Indridson had him fill out an application and was planning on hiring him but didn’t move fast enough. The man got a job somewhere else, hired on the spot.

“I didn’t do it and I’m like kicking myself,” she said.

Indridson said the scarcity of job applicants has forced her to pay higher wages than before the pandemic.

“We used to start at minimum wage,” she said. “Now we’re starting at $9. In two weeks they make $10 and in another month they’re going to make $11. Our top guys are making $13 or $14, where $10 used to be the most we ever paid, and we had a lot of people working.”

Texas and federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, though Indridson thinks it will eventually hit $15.

Pat Hobbs, executive director of Workforce Solutions Cameron, said demand for workers is driving up wages across the board. That’s not a bad thing, since wages, especially for lower paying jobs, have always been too low in Cameron County, he said. Meanwhile, the ongoing scarcity of workers is still causing problems for a lot of companies, and not just those in the hospitality or retail industries, Hobbs said.

“The workforce is really tight,” he said. “There’s two jobs out there for every unemployed person.”

Where have all the workers gone? Hobbs said there’s been a “change in attitude” among job-seekers, largely as a result of the current surplus of jobs.

“Now they think they have choices about where they work and so forth,” he said. “And that’s OK, but to have those choices, those higher paying jobs, you need an education or training. … Workers can go apply for a better job, IT job or whatever, but the employers still need people with the skill sets that make them money. If the applicants don’t have those skill sets they don’t get hired. So we still have an unemployment rate of 6.1 (percent) when the rest of the state is at 4.4.”

Hobbs predicted things will eventually get back to normal and said the workers that C&C Wings and other businesses need “are still out there.”

“They’re holding off, they’re looking around, trying to find something that they like better, that pays better or lets them work from home,” he said. “Sooner or later those jobs will all get taken up and their workforce will get hungry again and come back to those jobs. Right now workers have choices. It’s a workers’ market.”

Indridson said she thinks it may get easier in a month or two after people have burned through their IRS refunds and are ready to go back to work. Meanwhile, she’s brought two more employees on board and in late March reopened the Central Boulevard store with limited hours, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. Indridson plans to open Sundays at the Central location starting May 22.

The Ruben Torres store is still operating with limited hours, closing the kitchen at midnight instead of 2 a.m. pre-pandemic, though Indridson is aiming to return to regular hours and staffing levels as soon as possible. Indridson hopes this fall to restart the live music and karaoke that used to pack in the Winter Texans at the main store, she said.

For now she’ll have to forego that, and normal hours, until she can hire enough people to accommodate the extra business, Indridson said.

“If we were open full time we’d be killing it, because people would be coming in, but we just can’t be,” she said.