(Bloomberg) --

France is facing a shortage of staff in the retail and logistics sectors, as employees wary of contracting the coronavirus steer clear of their workplaces.

While the nation has largely been on lockdown since Monday, staff in industries that require a physical human presence are expected to continue working. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said after a cabinet meeting Wednesday there were no immediate shortages but warned of “tensions” in retail and logistics.

“If packaging makers stop work we can’t pack food supplies, and if there are no trucks we can’t deliver them,” Patrick Martin, deputy head of Medef, France’s biggest business federation, said on Europe 1 radio Thursday. “The economy is a chain, and if a link breaks everything goes down,” he added. “We need everyone at work under the best sanitary conditions.”

As restrictions on movement are tightened across Europe, staff shortages could spread to the rest of the continent.

German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner said Tuesday that the nation’s borders are open for the annual influx of farm workers, though many are hesitating to come for fear of “landing in containers on the way home.”

With the April planting season imminent, their help is “urgently” needed, said Joachim Rukwied, president of Germany’s farming lobby. Germany draws about 300,000 seasonal agricultural workers every year, two thirds of whom come from Romania and a third from Poland.

“We are in a paradoxical situation,” Luigi Merlo, the president of Italian logistics federation Federlogistica, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “Maritime commerce from Asia is about to restart but if workers at ports don’t have personal medical protections like masks, foreign ship captains are afraid of contagion.”

French workers can invoke a “right to withdraw” when they believe their health is at risk but Le Maire said that there must be “a grave and imminent danger.” President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday called for key sectors to continue operating while respecting health regulations, according to his office.

“People have to eat, French families need to go to grocery stores, food supplies need to get delivered,” Le Maire said.

French union leaders have accused employers of failing to provide staff with enough protective equipment, such as gloves and masks, and highlight a lack of enhanced health measures, such as additional cleaning.

Plexiglas Bubbles

Staff at Airbus SE are reluctant to return to assembly lines in Toulouse, but the aircraft maker wants them back Monday after closing plants in France and Spain for four days to clean workstations and separate workers. The company also created alternating red and blue teams, and asked employees to bring their own lunches to avoid contact at the canteen.

“We aren’t fighting management here, we’re all fighting the virus,” Dominique Delbouis, an official at Force Ouvriere, the main Airbus union, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Le Maire urged companies and employees to “return to normal economic life in the next few hours, which will of course slow down but will fuel essential activities.” He referred to cashiers, shelf stackers, bakers, telecommunications workers and trash collectors.

He praised Carrefour SA for protecting cashiers at its supermarkets with a plexiglas bubble. “If Carrefour is able to do it, all of them should,” he said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.