Minimum wage hikes and Statutory holiday rule changes killing small business

Galdorf

Galdorf

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First we got hit with minimum wage hike then they change rules where if you have an employee than works once a week that they get paid for any stat holiday even if they don't work that day.
Looks like i am going to have to hike prices again there are so many small businesses doing the same now.
There is a restaurant just down the road the only seafood place left along the main stretch to cope with all these increases they decided to close 1 day a week instead of increasing prices seems small businesses in Ontario get no breaks.
 
The one thing I'm glad I'm a 1-man operation. Otherwise, prices would need to go up for sure. that 2.00+ hike is nuts, not to mention next year when it goes up to 15.00. Unless the conservatives can toss Wynne and reverse it. Not sure if it's possible but who knows. Would have been more of a logical change to make it 12.00/hour increase or 12.50 even. It's not good for anyone even if people think it is; it's not. Sure you are getting more, but will be spending more on goods and services anyway.
 
I have 1 tech now, my son - cause my other decided to get married, move to Tennessee and have his own life, how dare he? :D

Anyway, nothing is like that here where I am, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually. To that, it'll be easy for me as I'll just put him on salary with a W-9 paying him as a contractor. He can do his own taxes once I hit him with a 1099. There is always a work around. At least here in the states.
 
Talked to a few businesses around the area, talked to managers and even some large chain fast food companies they laid off workers to make up for the changes the government made in minimum wage and stat holiday pay rules.
We also have customers on gaming side of the business that lost their job due to the changes from what i can see this caused a spike in unemployment in my area which is bad and is causing inflation on goods and services in my area.
 
Here in BC our wages are due to increase to $15 by 2019. Its gonna cause huge issues. As much as I think folks deserve to get paid more, you can't hike it so fast. It needs to be done gradually so adjustments can be made in the industry.

Just look at the mess Tim Hortons is in. Sure they will survive and there will be an exchange of hats for many workers, but the damage is done.
 
I guess I'm for the wage hike, people need to live a better life. If they have a better life, they will be happier employees, be more loyal, hope and work harder for promotion and stay longer. Not sure how the rules are in the US compared to CA but money makes people happy.
 
In an employee - employer relationship, the employer has most of the power. Even more so for minimum wage workers. Employers take advantage of this and thus why wage increases keeping with inflation and happening naturally.

Such a large increase at one time can be a shock to the system, but businesses that can't afford this aren't successful businesses and were just running on borrowed time.

This may trigger job loss and increased reliance on automation technologies... but this was going to happen anyway. Jobs that are actually providing real value to the customer won't be cut until the business is not actually successful & efficient enough to support the number of employers they have. (this may be an oversimplification, my grocery clerk is still providing value to me even when I'm just buying a few things, but only because I haven't learned how to use the self-checkout)

The nice thing about the large increase at once is that businesses have a good excuse to raise prices without having to worry as much about their competition, since they are all in the same situation.

I'm not sure how I feel about the stat holiday thing. What if they have more than one job? What happens then?
 
I did time in retail and know first hand how horrible the wages, and therefore the living conditions, are. But I'm not for governments telling me or anyone else how to run their business. Unlike a government, which can generate revenue by forced taxation, a private business has no way to force a customer to pay more.
 
Small businesses often suffer from horrible business models wherein they should have invested in tech instead of a person. Minimum wage laws only define a statistic at which a human hour is considered worthy to spend. Anyone that operates a business today that complains about $15 / hour wouldn't have been in business in the 60s, because guess what... that's what it was back then. Right up until the stagflation in the late 70s this was still generally true. So today you have a bunch of idiots employing people and acting like they're doing everyone this huge favor.

Well guess what, if you cannot handle $15 / hour you don't deserve employees. Your business doesn't deserve to exist. And you're right, job losses will happen. But they'll eventually be replaced by less greedy business owners that have brains.

I have no issues with the government getting involved in this way, even as small government as I am. Our government functions best when it's a referee. And it's not ok to employ people and then pay them so little they suck up money from social services. That's just offloading your responsibilities and costs as an employer onto the tax payer. Take care of your bloody people! That's the end of it really, do that and none of these rules matter.

But... but... but... I cannot raise my rates... well then I guess you have to? And when the work dries up you do something else? There's a reason people don't get their vacuum cleaners fixed anymore... there's a reason we don't fix TVs anymore... there's a reason appliance repair guys are a fraction of what they were two decades ago. That's also why I stopped supporting residential, because it's simply not financially viable. The only people I can afford to pay to get the work done are untrained, unskilled, entry level idiots... and I won't degrade my service to that level. Geek Squad is fine with that, I'm not. There's a reason plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, and just about every other professional service on the market has a base labor rate around $100/hour. Why are so many surprised these things are impacting everything else?

The upside to business owners... and a message to those that are left after the inevitable cuts. You'd better EARN that money, or you're going to be out. Minimum wage going up means the minimum standard of productivity just went up too.
 
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Tax cuts leading to employment is another area like this - companies don't hire because their taxes went down, they hire because the state of their business is that adding an employee will bring in more money than the cost of employing that person. If their taxes are lower, maybe that influences the numbers slightly, but unless the tax cuts in question radically change demand for the product/service they aren't going to have a significant impact on hiring.

If someone tells you they're going to hire a bunch of people because their taxes went down, they're lying to you (edit: or they're terrible at business, but if so then how did they get to a position to be hiring a bunch of people?).
 
Minimum wage increases do nothing but cause prices to increase and/or jobs to be lost. It's been proven again and again. I mean, I won't be affected by it in my business directly seeing as I pay well above $15/hour, but it will raise the prices of pretty much EVERYTHING from Big Macs to staplers. This will affect the bottom line of EVERYONE including those now making $15/hour. So great, now you're making $15/hour instead of $12/hour, but your expenses have almost doubled and you can't get government assistance anymore because you "make too much money." This is just the government's way of reducing the number of people eligible for welfare using underhanded tactics.
 
Wait you pay your techs 15 CAD per hour? thats like 12 USD an hour, which is just awful and if i'm not mistaken isn't the living expenses higher in canada? I live near columbia, SC and I only pay 900 a month on my mortgage for a 3 bedroom house and I wouldn't work for 12 USD an hour.

Edit: Oh wait min wage now in ontario is 11.40CAD so you pay your techs 9.18 USD an hour?
 
sapphirescales said:
...This is just the government's way of reducing the number of people eligible for welfare using underhanded tactics.
Click to expand...

This... and I warned a ton of my retail people this is what would happen. They didn't believe me, they got their raise, benefits went away, now they also pay taxes... they keep half of what they had before.

But you see, employed people shouldn't HAVE benefits from the government. If you don't define that break point that harshly, you just create Walmart, a huge company that makes buckets of money but has internal educational resources teaching employees how to use the system. They've turned welfare into a huge corporate subsidy, because they wouldn't have those employees without the state benefits propping them up!

So the State cranks up the min wage, because WTF else can it do?
 
Sky-Knight said:
This... and I warned a ton of my retail people this is what would happen. They didn't believe me, they got their raise, benefits went away, now they also pay taxes... they keep half of what they had before.

But you see, employed people shouldn't HAVE benefits from the government. If you don't define that break point that harshly, you just create Walmart, a huge company that makes buckets of money but has internal educational resources teaching employees how to use the system. They've turned welfare into a huge corporate subsidy, because they wouldn't have those employees without the state benefits propping them up!

So the State cranks up the min wage, because WTF else can it do?
Click to expand...

Right now, they get paid partial welfare, in proportion to whatever salary they are earning. Take away their salary, and the government gets to pay ALL their welfare.

Depending on how you look at it, Walmart et.al. could be saving the government money, especially since these are mostly unskilled labor.

Rick
 
If that were true we'd have high unemployment right now, but despite all the min-wage hikes across the US we're statistically at full employment.

Which means people are earning the higher wage, at different jobs. We've got a very small working generation trying to care for a HUGE retirement base.

I don't think total number of jobs is something we need be concerned about... at least not until automation kicks into the next phase. When that happens capitalism takes a nice face plant.
 
Sky-Knight said:
If that were true we'd have high unemployment right now, but despite all the min-wage hikes across the US we're statistically at full employment.
Click to expand...

LOL. You're delusional if you believe the "official" unemployment numbers. REAL unemployment is almost as worse as during the great depression. If you're unemployed for more than a few months, you're no longer considered unemployed by the government statistics but instead they classify you as "out of the labor force." In the 90's and before, "out of the labor force" only included retired/disabled people that would likely never work again. Now it includes anyone that's been unemployed for more than a few months:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
 
I happen to agree with the minimum wage hike as a lot of employers were taking advantage of the minimum wage employee. The way I look at it is if an employer was paying their employees a decent wage then the hike won't be much of an impact. Happy employees make for a better business. On the other hand I also think minimum wage hike was too much too fast. We'll just have to see what happens in the near future.
 
sapphirescales said:
LOL. You're delusional if you believe the "official" unemployment numbers. REAL unemployment is almost as worse as during the great depression. If you're unemployed for more than a few months, you're no longer considered unemployed by the government statistics but instead they classify you as "out of the labor force." In the 90's and before, "out of the labor force" only included retired/disabled people that would likely never work again. Now it includes anyone that's been unemployed for more than a few months:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Click to expand...

Exactly. Government entities, just like Corps, produce the numbers that make them look best with out it looking like a total lie.
 
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