There are many sides to the minimum wage debate and they all have some merit. The most important one, as I see it, is workers just trying to survive. Some people would argue that we all have a choice, and if that choice is not get a higher education, you decided your own fate. The truth of the matter is that we need maids to clean hotel rooms, people to prepare our fast food and pour our coffee. Do we as a society believe that the people who do this deserve a life of poverty and humiliation of using social programs just to eke by?
Starbucks is a perfect example of a business that provides benefits and a (living?) wage to its employees. Yes they have to charge $3 for a cup of coffee to do so, and they appear to be doing just fine. Famoso says they have to charge $20 now for a pizza, which does not seem out of line with today’s prices. If people won’t pay $20 dollars for it, have they considered that it may not be very good pizza. Businesses that say they cannot maintain enough profit for their owners’ high lifestyle, unless their employees live in poverty, doesn’t persuade me.
Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in Alberta, due to the drop in the world price of this province’s main resource. This has translated to less money being spent in the marketplace. All businesses are cutting staff and looking for ways to improve the bottom line. All businesses are feeling the pinch, not just the ones paying minimum wage. The statistics used in the argument about the downfalls of raising minimum wage are meaningless unless put in the context of all businesses at this time.
To say that the government should be giving subsidies to allow business to maintain their profit while all taxpayers pick up the cost, is ridiculous. Any business that says they can only survive if its employees starve, really has no place in the marketplace. The argument that people either work for poverty wages or they won’t work at all, shows the greedy thinking of those uncaring enough to utter it.
They say you can judge a society by how well it treats the poorest of its community. I would like to think that I still live in a community that cares enough about its residents that we stand with the poor, and pay a little more so that they can still eat and have a safe place to lay their heads.
Or maybe we just side with business and reintroduce slavery; that seems to be the option business is lobbying the government to take.
Tim Andrew, St. Albert
