Re: “A restaurateur’s concerns over a new minimum wage,” comment, Aug. 3.
My family owns and operates a small convenience-store chain in southern Ontario, where the Liberal government will be imposing a $15 minimum-wage law soon.
Each of our 28 locations has a full-time store manager who is paid a salary plus performance bonus. Most of the other nearly 300 employees in our stores are part-time, entry-level workers or high-school and university students who are paid minimum wage.
Our accountants are studying the impact of this new minimum-wage law. There is no way that our business model, which has worked well for more than 40 years, will be sustainable in a $15 minimum-wage world.
Options include: (1) laying off all the young workers and hiring older, seasoned workers who are willing to work full-time hours and who bring $15 per hour of value to the job; (2) closing weaker locations and moving the managers of those locations to the stronger locations as full-time minimum-wage employees.
The bottom line is that our business simply cannot afford to employ low-skilled, entry-level workers or students at $15 per hour. The bitter irony is that the very people that the $15 minimum-wage law is designed to help will be the ones who will be hurt the most.
It will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for entry-level workers and students to find jobs.
Paul Arnold
Saanich
