TORONTO—A bill raising Ontario’s minimum wage to $14 on January 1 and again to $15 an hour on January 1, 2019 has many business owners concerned about the impact those increases will have on their business’s ability to survive—although few seem willing to go on the record about it.
“It’s a cutthroat legislation,” said one Island businessman who declined to be quoted on the record. “It’s a real Catch-22. On the one hand if you speak up about it, people will just say that you don’t want people to make a decent living. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
The business owner pointed out that there were very few employees in his family’s businesses that don’t already make more than the new minimum wage already, but that there would be a cascading effect where other employees would naturally anticipate a corresponding increase in hourly rates commensurate with the increase from the current minimum wage of $11.60.
“You are talking about a 20 percent rise in January,” he said. “This after another 10 percent over the last couple of years and then another big jump in 2018. It’s all happening too fast.”
Concerns about the escalating impact of the rise in minimum wage have been a common theme in discussions with local employers, but not all have expressed serious concerns. “It won’t really have that much of an impact on us,” said Denise Lytle, the new co-owner of Little Current’s Anchor Inn Hotel and restaurant.
Others have greeted the news with a sense of fatalism. “The government is going to do what the government is going to do,” said Luc Noel, of Luc’s Restaurant in Little Current. “You can complain about it all you want, but what are you going to do? They will do what they want.”
The Progressive Conservative Official Opposition recently announced that they would put the brakes on the rise in minimum wages, with a 25-cent annual raise each year to bring the minimum to $15 in the year 2020, should they be elected to government in 2018.
The Ontario NDP in the meantime have wholeheartedly backed the rise, chastising the PCs for being “out of touch.”
“They like to talk a good game, but I’ll tell you this—I was shocked to hear that they’re happy to have workers continue to earn wages that won’t even pay the rent and put food on the table,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath following the Tory announcement. “We are in favour of a minimum wage increase, we have been for a long time, but the fact that the Conservatives are saying people have to wait another four years before $15 minimum wage is in place in Ontario shows how utterly out of touch that party is.”
Unions are also largely on board with the increases. “When working people say what they need, they have the power to get it,” said OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas. “Bill 148 is a significant step forward for workers’ rights, and I think every union, community group and individual who helped make it happen should take a bow.”
But the province’s hospitality industry, a major player in the low-end wage market, is likening the rapid increases as “approaching a disaster,” citing absorbing the rapidity of the increases as the major challenge facing their industry.
Other negative voices came from reports from the TD Canada Bank and the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, who both estimated the potential for between 90,000 and 185,000 jobs lost in Ontario as a result of Bill 148. Ontario’s own Financial Accountability Office warned that 50,000 jobs could be lost.
But these assessments fly in the face of numerous economists who maintain the increase in minimum wage will, in fact, boost the Ontario economy by putting more money in the hands of lower income consumers. Those most likely to spend a larger percentage of their wages on the necessities of life.
Bill 148 is entitled the ‘Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017’ and contains a great deal more than the headline grabbing rise in minimum wages, even though most are making less waves than the income rises.
Among the coming changes in Ontario’s commercial environment are: the addition of a critical illness leave; the expansion of family medical leave; the expansion of the list of professionals who can certify statutory leaves; a revision to the “three-hour rule” that will entitle employees to more pay guarantees; exceptions to the on-call and scheduling rules for employers who provide essential public services (this was in response to a clarion alarm raised by small rural municipalities who envisioned having to pay their local firefighters for their 24/7 on-call job requirements); clarification on what Equal Pay for Equal Work will apply in that the duties performed by workers do not necessarily have to be identical, but rather “substantially the same”; deletion of the hours-based “seniority system” exception to Equal Pay for Equal Work; the expansion of what employee information may need to be provided to a union during a union organizing drive; and a ban on mandatory high-heeled shoes in the workplace under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (except for the entertainment industry).
