And Facts4EU’s experts have suggested the disparity is likely to have been a factor in persuading Airbus to commit to Brexit Britain, following comments by the aerospace giant’s CEO Guillaume Faury last week. The pro-Brexit think tank based its report on figures published by the bloc last week setting out the average wage costs for companies across the bloc.
Specifically, Facts4EU considered non-wage labour costs, in other words the cost to employers on top of the actual money paid to their workers – for example, national insurance and other contributions.
For the UK, these amount to £4.33 (€5.10) an hour – less than half the £10.19 (€12) they add up to in across the English Channel.
Facts4EU’s report also highlights the difference between Toulouse-based Airbus’s stance prior to Brexit, and the one which the company is apparently adopting now.
In 2018, Tom Williams, chief operating officer of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, warned: “In any scenario, Brexit has severe negative consequences for the UK aerospace industry and Airbus in particular.”
However, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph last week, Mr Faury said: “We want to grow in the UK.
“We will be willing to do more than we are doing today, to have a win-win for the UK and Airbus.”
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“Typically you were twice as likely to be out of a job in the EU27 as you were in the UK.
“When it comes to youth unemployment the situation has been even worse.
“Some countries in the EU have essentially seen almost a generation condemned, with rates as high as 50 percent in some countries.”
Mr Evans added: “In the new post-COVID era we are entering, the challenges for businesses are immense.
“That said, those on the Facts4EU.Org team who are involved in business know where they would rather employ people. And it would not be in France.”
Brexit Britain now had a “wonderful opportunity” – having vaccinated a far higher proportion of its population than the EU27, and with a “much more appealing basis of employment law and associated costs”, Mr Evans suggested.
He continued: “After years of negative and depressing commentary from the anti-Brexit Remainer Establishment, we suspect that business leaders will now be viewing the future in the United Kingdom with rather more optimism than some of their counterparts in the EU.”
French President Emmanuel Macron is under pressure domestically after his announcement last week of a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of a third coronavirus wave – fact he appeared to blame on Britain.
In a televised address the 43-year-old admitted “the numbers are charging away from us” and that France was faced with “a race against the clock”.
However, he added: “This variant which was identifie for the first time from our British neighbours at the end of last year.
And to a certain extent, of course, gave rise to an epidemic within the epidemic and that is greater than last spring.
