New Minimum Wage Nears
Prince George, B.C. – There’s been plenty of speculation, and Minister of Jobs Tourism and Skills Training Shirley Bond says the new minimum wage rate will be announced this spring.
“The Province is reviewing the minimum wage increase to keep it in line with overall economic growth. “We expect to announce a minimum wage increase this spring, with the new rate coming into effect Sept. 15, 2016” says Bond.
While not saying what the new rate will be, she hints it could be higher than had been anticipated “Given our stronger economic growth, we feel there should be room for a modest incremental adjustment beyond B.C.’s CPI so that all workers can benefit from our success.”
She says setting the new rate will be based on achieving a balance “The balance is between making sure all British Columbians can share in our province’s success while not impeding businesses’ ability to grow.”
The current minimum wage in BC is $10.45 an hour. It was increased last September, the first such increase in three years in BC
Comments
But all the business owners in BC will go broke. They will all have to close their doors and move to another province or country.
Shirley should watch Global news they announced $10.75 this morning starting Sept. 15
She should watch Global News as she doesn’t pay attention at her cabinet meetings.
It’s 10.55 come this September and it will eventually hit 10.75 in 2017. That’s from Global BC.
– Given our stronger economic growth-
What a crock of BS. There is an election coming Shirley. Are you seeing longer lineups at the food banks and welfare office?
Every Province and Territory in Canada with the exception of New Brunswick has a higher minimum wage than BC.
New Brunswick’s minimum wage will increase to 10.65 on April 1/16 which will make the minimum wage in BC the lowest in Canada. Not exactly the kind of press the Christy Government would want going into an election,.
Living wage for PG $16.90. and I think you would need a 40 hr work week.
If all the minimum waged jobs were raised to $ 16.90 per hour, and everyone who had one got 40 hrs. a week, would that solve all the problems raising the minimum wage is supposed to be able to solve? Just asking. Personally, I don’t think so. Any amount of gross wages paid is a business ‘cost’ to the owner of that business, while the net amount received by the employee is his or her ‘income’. ALL ‘costs’ have to flow through and enter ‘prices’. Of everything those ‘incomes’ are being earned for to buy. If there were no other considerations, just the difference between gross ‘cost’ to the business versus net ‘income to the employee has already created a disparity between the flow of ‘costs’ reaching prices, and that of ‘incomes’ capable of fully meeting them. But there are LOTS of other considerations. Here’s one of them. ALL businesses taken in an overall sense, operate on borrowed money. Their banker creates financial credit for them, which they agree to repay to him plus interest, out of the profit the business is projected to make. If that profit doesn’t materialise quite as expected, the credit tap to that business is turned off. And shortly thereafter there is no more business, and no more jobs for those employed in them. So what, you say? Well, to put it shortly, all any increase in fully employer paid minimum wage is going to accomplish is a demise of more businesses, plus everyone still working gets to work with ‘bigger figures’. There is NO net advantage in any purely economic sense. If you want there to be, you have to fiund a way to increase ‘incomes’ WITHOUT simultaneously and increasingly also increasing business ‘costs’.
And such is really not all that difficult to do. It can be accomplished by using virtually the same technique of credit a banker uses when he lends money he doesn’t have, on the expectation that doing so will generate enough additional money for him to be repaid fully and also profit. In the economy as a whole the total amount of ‘production’ nearly always increasingly exceeds that of ‘consumption’. Long term it could be no other way, since we certainly can’t ‘consume’ anything that hasn’t been first ‘produced’, can we? In fact, the only sane primary reason we do ‘produce’ is to ‘consume’. You can easily see this in a more simple economy, but it’s more difficult with a more complex one. Regardless, it’s still true. When we spend our incomes to buy any product we are really paying for TWO things. The product itself that we need or desire. And the PLANT that made it. Which we most certainly do not get, and don’t really want in any case. We are in a position where we are continually, and ever increasingly, charged in prices for Capital Depreciation. But we are NEVER fully CREDITED for Capital Appreciation, which is normally invariably much, much greater. And so we have a ‘financial’ poverty in the midst of a ‘physical’ plenty. That’s not hard to rectify. But raising the minimum wage isn’t going to do it.
All profit comes from the exploitation of labour, plain and simple. The answer is to hold price of goods and service constant, raise wages, reduce profit. But in your scenario, reducing profit isn’t even a consideration and rising wages as an expense are passed on to the customer, dollar for dollar. So, just as the worker is seeking to gain through meager rising minimum wages, the owner seeks to maintain the same income through business profit.
And, please, stop with the “businesses will go under” mantra; it’s based on nothing more than greed and corporate propaganda.
Raising the minimum wage by 25 cents an hour is a total embarrassing cruel joke. How in the world do you think anyone can survive? There has obviously been a trend in BC to pay min. wage for all types of services and our friendly Harper did not help with TFWs and guaranteeing employers with cheap labor for many years at min. wage. It looks like the only way to get a decent wage is to become unionized.
They’ll have great difficulty surviving, oldman. But such would also be the case if the minimum wage were raised more. As it stands now, when an employer paid income increases, the costs of that increase HAS TO flow through into prices, raising them, too. Only they’re going to go up more. Because their are a whole range of additional employer paid costs that will rise proportionately to the increase in the net wage the employee receives as his or her net income. CPP, for instance, takes a dollar off the employer as well as every dollar it takes off the employee. EI takes $ 1.40 from the employer for every $ 1.00 taken from the employee. WorkSafe is entirely employer paid, based on gross payroll, which has just increased. Statutory Holidays, Vacation Pay, both up, and costs that’ll be added to prices. And those are just the basics. Why, if you say people should unionise if they want a better deal, (and I’m not disagreeing with you), do unions not ever look at the actual FACTS surrounding costs, incomes and prices? If they did, I think they’d very quickly realise that far from the traditional picture of every employer as some kind of profit grubbing exploiter of the working classes, (which they once may very well have been, before the advent of unions), this is definitely NOT the case any more. Today, the problem lies elsewhere. And if unions want to have a hand in solving it they’d better wake up to the FACTS that current labor incomes are only a PART, and overall, an ever declining PART of ALL the costs that go into prices. You go on strike always for ‘higher incomes’. But regardless if you get them or not, those incomes are still only a PART of the costs that make up the whole. Strike instead for LOWER PRICES. You’d be far further ahead.
Do you really think you are going to go out of business if you raise the price of a cup of coffee by 25 cents and pass it on to the consumer if it meant paying someone a decent wage. Raise the price of a hotel room by 5 dollars you as the consumer would not know the difference. What happens when the price of gas goes up? You pay it.
Oldman, if it were only so simple. It isn’t. Sure, the price of a cup of coffee can go up 25 cents, or a hotel room by 5 bucks, and most people wouldn’t know the difference. But when this happens right across the board, with everything going up, (which it will ~ you only need look at the history of this recurring issue to see that), it will have an adverse effect on both the number of businesses that are able to survive, and the overall number of people still employed. Look beyond trying to wring more out of the employer, who in all too many cases has ever the less to give as his margins decline. It’s a far bigger problem than can be solved by jacking up the minimum wage, or any wage, for that matter, so long as the costs involved lead to still higher prices.
I wonder sometimes, just what is the real objective of those calling for a substantial increase in the minimum wage? It should be to give the recipient a greater chance to enjoy a better material life, and to do so without driving him or her ever deeper into debt to do so. It should be done in a way that DOESN’T put more employers under, and reduce the prospects for employment of those needing incomes even further. It should be done in a way that is NOT ‘inflationary’ ~ where it just takes ever the more money to do anything that any given amount of money is doing now. Ideally, it should be done in a way that actually LOWERS prices, which is of far more benefit to consumers when they spend their incomes that haven’t been lowered at all in ratio to those prices. I’d like to think those people making this call are sincerely well intentioned and have the best interests of all at heart. But why, in the face of facts to the contrary, do they insist on doing again what has been tried over and over again in the past, and failed? Look at the ratio of personal debt to disposable income. It’s now around 165% and looming larger. Why should it be that high? And why in the name of all that’s Holy or anything else, should we want to increase it further? Do you like paying for your own slavery?
No one should have the right to employ another person for anything less than a “living wage”. Slavery (forced labor with no pay) is wrong. So is shades of slavery where Company X pays a fraction of what it takes to live and then relies on someone else to make up the difference.
According to stats Canada 2014 labor from survey 6 out of 10 canadians earning under $15 per hr.are 25 or older and 35 percent alone are over 40. Who earns less than 15 dollars in Canada by sex 2014.Female 59 and male 42 percent.
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