With the provincial election quickly approaching, current Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, has made a series of desperate attempts to win over voters – lowering hydro costs, OHIP+, improving the Ontario Student Assistance Program and majorly increasing the minimum wage.
In theory, a high minimum wage that allows workers to provide for themselves and their families is a great idea.
Unfortunately, when it comes into fruition, a minimum wage bump can often times do much more harm than good, Ontario residents have already begun to see the unintended consequences of this legislation.
Minimum wage jobs don’t exist with the capability to pay a mother of three kids enough to support her family.
Minimum wage jobs exist for young people, students and unskilled labourers to earn some money and gain some experience to move up the career ladder.
Raising the minimum wage from $11.60 per hour to $15 per hour essentially cuts off the bottom rungs of the career ladder and works to eliminate the jobs that are attempting to help.
There is already an emerging shift in the economy moving away from human interactions and towards automation.
Independent restaurants, stores and companies simply cannot afford to be paying their employees $15 per hour when they rely on keeping prices low as a means to attract new customers and remain competitive with larger chains.
Touch screens, mobile ordering and self-checkouts are on the rise. Raising the minimum wage only further incentivizes companies to follow this trend of automation and artificial intelligence to offset the costs of paying employees a high wage and having to deal with human error, sick days and scheduling limitations.
Minimum wage workers will see hours being cut, benefits being reduced and new jobs becoming harder and harder to find. But it isn’t just the minimum wage workers that are affected by this – small business owners and consumers face setbacks as well.It can be very costly to run a small business, especially in its early stages.
When operating costs go up due to increased minimum wage and the resulting inflation from that wage bump, small businesses struggle to stay afloat.
Independent restaurants, stores and companies simply cannot afford to be paying their employees $15 per hour when they rely on keeping prices low as a means to attract new customers and remain competitive with larger chains.
Even those who aren’t working minimum wage jobs, or paying the salaries of those who do, are ultimately affected by the minimum wage increase.
As labour becomes more expensive on every aspect of the production line — from factory workers, to distributors, to delivery drivers and to final merchandisers – the price of those items being produced and sold will increase exponentially to compensate for the high costs.
The inflation caused by a minimum wage bump of this magnitude leads to a reduction in the purchasing power of our dollar, meaning that consumers will be able to buy less with their money than they were able to before the minimum wage increase.
Ontario is only beginning to see the repercussions of the rising minimum wage and will continue to as prices continue rise and jobs are lost to automation and artificial intelligence.
Unfortunately, even if Wynne is voted out, the wage bump and its consequences cannot be reversed.