A room full of St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce members couldn’t budge Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray from her NDP government’s promise to hike the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018.
It didn’t matter when chamber members advised her that the increase will put undue strain on small businesses which are struggling to keep the doors open during the deepest recession in decades.
It didn’t matter when chamber members told her higher wage costs mean small businesses will have to increase prices or cut costs; the latter could mean laying off the very people her government is trying to help in order to stay afloat.
And she certainly didn’t buy into the notion that a 47 per cent increase to the minimum wage over three years would drive up the cost of virtually everything, from daycare to doughnuts, as business would have to pass on the higher wage costs to consumers. Curtis Stewart, owner of Little Einsteins Daycare, told the minister at Tuesday’s chamber luncheon that he’s going to have to increase all of his wages to keep the range between staff and managers consistent with today’s pay scale. Those increases will have to be passed onto the parents, which will create hardship for young families. Her response was to thank him for his comments.
There is no arguing with the premise that everyone who works deserves a living wage. Does raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour accomplish that? The data suggests otherwise. According to numbers supplied by the Alberta government, only 2.2 per cent of all workers in Alberta are earning minimum wage. Of that, approximately 50 per cent are between the ages of 15 and 24, and 55 per cent are working part-time. Less than 10 per cent of minimum wage earners are the head of a household and only 1.5 per cent are single parents with children. If the NDP government truly wants to help those in this situation, would it not be a better strategy to create a program specifically for those in the statistical bottom than implement a blanket minimum wage increase that threatens to negatively impact Alberta’s economy?
Small and medium-size businesses are the engines that drive the economy. They create employment, and employment is what greases the economic engine. The hard reality is, however, that businesses have no choice but to deal with the minimum wage increase. As chamber member Joe Becigneul pointed out to Gray, some employers may resort to reducing employee benefits or increase premiums to existing benefits. Gray said her government will continue to come to chamber events and talk to business owners.
We give Gray credit for walking into the proverbial lion’s den. Addressing the minimum wage increase in a room of business owners takes some moxie. Some of her answers to the questions, however, were not answers at all. The only takeaway chamber members have from yesterday’s lunch was, ready or not, $15 an hour will be the new minimum wage in 2018, just in time for the next expected provincial election in 2019.
