ON ISSUE #28 - 32-per-cent hike in minimum wage rates will cause many small businesses to close

[mosquito]

Even the Toronto Star is speaking the truth ...

"A 32-per-cent hike in minimum wage rates will cause many small businesses to go out of business, especially those of us in the labour-intensive restaurant industry,"
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/comm...-to-close.html
The provincial government’s recent announcement raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in the next 18 months garnered headlines like “a good day for the little guy.” We beg to differ. The other “little guys,” hard-working and risk-taking owners of Ontario’s small business community, will have more bad days making ends meet.

A 32-per-cent hike in minimum wage rates will cause many small businesses to go out of business, especially those of us in the labour-intensive restaurant industry. Ontario restaurants have the lowest profit margin in Canada, according to both Statistics Canada and industry association Restaurant Canada.

The average Ontario restaurant owner has only 10 employees with annual revenues around $689,000. Ontario restaurateurs earn the lowest pre-tax profit in Canada, 3.4 per cent or $23,450 per year. This wage hike will cost them $47,000 per year.

...
Premier Wynne has backtracked on her promise to let the consumer price index determine annual minimum wage increases and keep it out of politics.



I talked to some friends I know in a local restaurant and they are just at break even, when you look at with $700+ electric bills (cooking, heat, water heating all gas and about 1/3 that), increases in meat and produce etc. Their plans are to not hire full time staff, but probably will replace the higher costing full time staff with several part timers (students likely as the lower pay option) and spend more of their own time working.

P.S. I stopped in at the restaurant near to my friends, seems the previous owner lasted just over 1 year from start of construction to selling cheap just to get out! .. and the new owner was already complaining about expenses and costs....

[exgunner]

As a small business owner I was going to hire a second student or young employee but not now not worth the cost when comp,cpp is added

[skypilot]

After spending months working on business investments analysis in Ontario and meetings with Prov. Business advisors, BDO and supply chain groups, I realize that I have never seen a more business unfriendly environment than Ontario Canada.

Over-Regulation and petty government fees at every turn, insane hydro prices, Carbon tax and unreasonable transportation regs, fees, permits, permit costs, permit bonds along with MTO rules.

If an Ontario business is 100% compliant I can see little way to a profit without unreasonable charges to the consumer.


If you make LABOR more expensive, businesses will find a way to eliminate it or reduce it as it is the ONE LINE ITEM that is 100% controllable by the business owner. So either higher consumer pricing, less hours for the employed, fewer full time jobs, robots or some other similar solution to reduce labor costs.

[fratri]

Pretty good video, if you got a few minutes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Humans not need to apply

[mosquito]

https://www.therebel.media/dollarama...mum_wage_costs

Canadian discount retailer Dollarama is testing self-checkouts as one way to combat the added costs of minimum wage hikes in Alberta and Ontario.
Dollarama is investing $10 million into company-wide cost-cutting initiatives, including testing new human-free point of sale systems.

[Bonkers]

Slow clap for the people on here that don't believe people should earn close to a living wage. $15 an hour isn't even considered a living wage anymore.

[terrym]

Slow clap for the people on here that don't believe people should earn close to a living wage. $15 an hour isn't even considered a living wage anymore.

Will you still have a "slow clap" when people lose thier minimum wage jobs? Better to make $12/hr than make nothing. When businesses fold and stop paying minimum wages, hydro ,gas, taxes, insurance and buying goods and services so they can operate how exactly is that going to help the economy? Sounds like you went to the Liberal school of economics where budgets balance themselves and it's fun to run defects and burden our children.

[Bonkers]

I could give a lecture in basic economics but it would fall on deaf ears. When people make more money, they spend more of disposable income. You spend more business's make more. For every one article you bring up saying that a rise in the minimum wage is a bad idea, there are 30 to prove that wrong. Let's use your "$12/hour is liveable wage theory"

$12x 37.5= 450 a week 1800 a month.
$1800- $1000 Avg rent= $800
$800- $175 utilites= $625
$625- $260 food = $365
$365- $300 Student Loans, Car Payment, Insurance= $65

On a very basic level you have $65 in disposable income a month divide that by 4 and you have $16 a week. That means for the majority of people in Ontario we can just put back $65 dollars a month into the economy. That mean's no retirement savings, no children because you can't afford it. No sick days because those aren't paid for us anymore, Little vacation because you can't afford it, basic medications if covered, no purchased house etc. You can't have a functioning society if the next 3 generations are broke. Even if we work fulltime. Those generations are suppose to subsidise the retired

[trimmer21]

A close friend started his landscaping business as a stand-alone self employment project that grew into employing 25 people (15 summer students) 14 years ago. Since then,between high fuel taxes,CPP contributions,WSIB premiums,corporate taxes,insurance and now this,he's shrinking his business back to it's original size of just him and his wife. He told me that he wasn't interest in a business that just breaks even at the end of the month after everyone else gets paid except him. The Liberals somewhere somehow got the idea that all businesses were benevolent societies designed specifically to supply employment and big wages instead of being in business to make money for owners and/or shareholders. Nobody owes anybody a job and there's no such thing as a free lunch.

[exgunner]

Who in today's age only works 37.5 hours a week I worked more then that going through high school I don't know many people in my industry that only work 37.5 and I promise you every small buisness owner works far more then That every week .