So the CFIB and certain other unenlightened self-proclaimed spokespersons for the business crowd are flipping their corks over the announced increases to the minimum wage.
In one breath they say virtually nobody pays minimum wage (i.e. everybody pays above it) so it's a moot point, and then in the next breath - they say it's a tax grab. Huh?!
Then the CFIB spokesperson bemoans that between 2005 and the scheduled increase in 2009 minimum wage will have gone up 40%. Well how much has the cost of gas, or of buying a home gone up? Or how about rent??? Two days ago I read a story that some students in Saskatoon just had their rent jacked up by 250%. The CFIB is strangely silent on those facts.
Just like they ignore the fact that in the last two provincial budgets the government gave the business crowd $660,000,000.00 (that's a whopping 660 million dollars) over three years in corporate tax breaks.
They complain that it might cost a restaurant employing 25 workers an additional $16,000 per year. Restaurants like this???? Restaurants that simply steal it from the workers with no consequences.
Is there no end to the GREED of these people?
Great article Larry!
ReplyDeleteI guess they want more people living in poverty.
Costs of everything are rising. Right now minimum wage is not a living wage.
Many people are coming out of post secondary education with huge debt loads, they are going to school to make a better life for themselves so they can work for more than minimum wage.
It is interesting that nobody balked when the CEO from Ipsco got what was it- something around 31 million severance. Nobody balked when the CEO from Sask Wheat Pool got a huge increase this past year. In a news story further down in this blog dated April 16th/07 titles "Executives at Sask's top firms raking in millions." Yet we have this huge outcry over minimum wage increases - starting with 30 cents an hour increase January 1st.