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2018 Ontario Provincial Election Discussion

King of Kensington said:
And what a stupid post by Andrea Horwath:

https://twitter.com/AndreaHorwath/status/949050622573150209
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I don't see what's wrong with it. There seem to be 3 options here.
  1. Minimum wage should not have been raised so quickly to completely alter the business model for 1000's of employers.
  2. Raise minimum wage, but continue to allow employers to cut back in other ways to ensure employees don't actually make more money.
  3. Workers deserve more money and government policy should force employers to give it.
The first and 3rd are completely logical - and are basically the position of Brown and Horwath.
The 3rd option is purely a political exercise in which they try to gain the support of a naive electorate by demonizing business.
 
Last night’s National had a reasonably objective piece on the costly math for Tim Horton’s franchisees of Wynne’s minimum wage hike. If she can’t even get a propaganda piece from the CBC, she’s in real trouble.
 
pman said:
Last night’s National had a reasonably objective piece on the costly math for Tim Horton’s franchisees of Wynne’s minimum wage hike. If she can’t even get a propaganda piece from the CBC, she’s in real trouble.
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I have difficulty seeing many places like Tim Hortons justify having 24/7h locations with the new wage hike.
 
WislaHD said:
I have difficulty seeing many places like Tim Hortons justify having 24/7h locations with the new wage hike.
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Problem is, corporately, Tim's may want themselves to be known as a 24/7 operation. If some locations buck the national trend, it could have a negative effect on the entire company. If you are a franchisee, you have to play by the corporate rules.
Smaller mom and pop operations can easily reduce hours.
 
BurlOak said:
Problem is, corporately, Tim's may want themselves to be known as a 24/7 operation. If some locations buck the national trend, it could have a negative effect on the entire company. If you are a franchisee, you have to play by the corporate rules.
Smaller mom and pop operations can easily reduce hours.
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Then they cut the number of workers during the day, meaning an already over-burdened staff has to take on more tasks and responsibilities, and overall service declines even further.

It is just a matter of time until the front-end staff taking orders is replaced by machine and the minimum wage hike is hastening it. Staff roles will be shifted to preparing orders and performing backroom tasks, and overall staff numbers will be reduced.
 
Shouldn't a rise in minimum wages have a positive inflationary effect? Doesn't that translate into higher demand for goods and services in turn driving up prices?
That's where you adjust the impact of costs.
I understand that the parent company in the case of Timmy's controls prices for franchisees, but then that's the business model the franchisees signed up for. It was obviously lucrative enough to take on certain risks in their estimation. If your costs go up you raise prices not renege on labour contracts. Talk to your parent company instead of trying to chintz your employees.

PS: I don't patronise Timmy's (as well as think they do not represent what Canada is for me) so I can't even pretend to go along with any sort of boycott. Which anyway could hurt the employees the most anyway. Franchisees have investable assets, I wouldn't worry about them too much.
 
WislaHD said:
It is just a matter of time until the front-end staff taking orders is replaced by machine and the minimum wage hike is hastening it. Staff roles will be shifted to preparing orders and performing backroom tasks, and overall staff numbers will be reduced.
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Does anyone here go into a McDonald’s these days? Self serve order kiosks. Just like @WislaHD has written. Staff only prepare orders. They don’t take them.
 
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MTown said:
Shouldn't a rise in minimum wages have a positive inflationary effect? Doesn't that translate into higher demand for goods and services in turn driving up prices?
That's where you adjust the impact of costs.
I understand that the parent company in the case of Timmy's controls prices for franchisees, but then that's the business model the franchisees signed up for. It was obviously lucrative enough to take on certain risks in their estimation. If your costs go up you raise prices not renege on labour contracts. Talk to your parent company instead of trying to chintz your employees.

PS: I don't patronise Timmy's (as well as think they do not represent what Canada is for me) so I can't even pretend to go along with any sort of boycott. Which anyway could hurt the employees the most anyway. Franchisees have investable assets, I wouldn't worry about them too much.
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I doubt many would have expected their labour costs to go up by over 30% in 15 months. This is a huge change that nobody could have foreseen.
Maybe Tim's could have added a special fee in Ontario - similar to a Fuel surcharge that airlines charged. That way the national campaign could still say a donut cost $0.99, but in Ontario there is a few percent surcharge.
 
BurlOak said:
I doubt many would have expected their labour costs to go up by over 30% in 15 months. This is a huge change that nobody could have foreseen.
Maybe Tim's could have added a special fee in Ontario - similar to a Fuel surcharge that airlines charged. That way the national campaign could still say a donut cost $0.99, but in Ontario there is a few percent surcharge.
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Thanks for highlighting my point. They didn't need to foresee this increase in labour cost to know that having the parent company control prices is a risk. They were willing to take that risk. In business you can always safely assume that input costs will rise beyond what you may have expected, but then, most of the time you can also control your prices to reflect shocks to input costs. This is a different business model with its own inherent risk which we can assume were deemed to be worth the potential returns on investment to these people.
 
I just can't feel sorry for people with investable assets who gamble with said assets. This is how corporate welfare starts.
 
Besides, don't blame the increase minimum wage for the shift to automation - companies will do so even if it stayed the same, and counting on tech to stay costly is a fool's errand.

AoD
 
MTown said:
Shouldn't a rise in minimum wages have a positive inflationary effect? Doesn't that translate into higher demand for goods and services in turn driving up prices?
That's where you adjust the impact of costs.
Click to expand...

Yes, we always hear that the sky is falling after a minimum wage case, but the actual evidence about massive job losses is very weak.
 
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