gardengirl wrote:SIGH. Entry level jobs are entry level jobs. They are there so people with few or no skills can gain some experience and skills.
They are NOT intended to be "living wage" jobs. What is the "living wage" in Kelowna, $50K? So the snot nosed kid with no skills and lots of attitude pushing watching you push your own groceries through the self-serve till should make that too? You better be prepared to pay a lot more for those groceries.
The real problem is the lack of full-time jobs, not necessarily wages. So, there's
lots of opportunity for the likes of Loblaw to start increasing full-time jobs and wages, albeit not necessarily to $15 overnight, and then telling
shareholders to expect far less share buybacks and dividend increases. It's fundamentally a grocery store operator, not exactly historically known as a "good dividend payor". If you want higher dividends, that comes with commensurately higher risk and I'd suggest to go buy a bank stock. These are supposed to be companies you "hide in" when you're tactically defensive due to a weakened economy and volatile stock markets (we have a weakening economy now but completely muted stock markets currently). If that forces a major correction in their stock price(s), so be it. They're already inflated to arguably nosebleed levels anyway. :(
That's why, while I like the idea of a "living wage" as a "minimum wage," a far better approach, in my view, is reforming provincial labour codes (and the federal one) that restrict last-minute shift changes, guarantee minimum hours of work for part-time employees, restrict the classification of "casual" employees when they're frequently called in for what would seem to be a regular number of hours per week, expand mandatory lunch breaks to 30 minutes paid (not unpaid) for full time employees and certain other provisions of which there
are many. The "full time" work week should be 35 hours of paid, worked hours, not including breaks,
not 40, after which overtime provisions
should kick in. We allow this for our
two-tier caste system of workers: the
public sector, so why
not the
private sector, too? Also, gov't needs to institute
universal basic income for those 19-65 who
do work on casual, temporary, part-time and even precarious independent contractor-type work in this Uber- and Airbnb-led economy. Cost impacts to taxpayers would be minimal to nil (in fact, I suspect, revenue positive even!) and paid for by less crime, less hospitalizations and an employer-paid levy, which could be reduced with a non-refundable tax credit for
sustained permanent payroll growth of employees working more than 25 hours per week. Moreover, on costs, this would replace
existing provincial welfare rolls, eliminating untold thousands of public sector jobs in thousands of welfare offices across the country, consolidated within several regional offices and a 24/7/365 contact centre per province. :)
Cheers,
Doug