To the editor,
When I read the June 4 headline and article by Jock Finlayson, VP, Chief Policy Officer for Business Council of British Columbia, I wanted to respond.
I agree all businesses are struggling and that it is a global struggle. I do not agree that a 75 cent increase to the minimum wage should be delayed during this pandemic. That whole extra $30 a week before taxes, and only if you are lucky enough to have a 40 hour week, will not be and is not the cause of business going under. Businesses will fail for a variety of reasons, not because business is overpaying employees, let alone offering any kind of extra benefit.
Business has and will continue to receive numerous tax dollars to help them through. Complaining about a scheduled 75 cent increase to already poor wages makes a business look like the faceless, heartless giants the working class has come to know.
No one seems to mind when the government is giving front line workers extra COVID pay to top up wages but these wages will have to be declared as income and will be taxed.
People with money will travel and spend and those without will stay home. Either way, cash will be spent on food, fuel and accommodations. And business will do what it always does and that is pass the cost down to the consumer.
Everyone wants and needs our economy to come back and it slowly will, but using a pandemic to deny a 75 cent per hour scheduled increase to the minimum wage (not to be confused with a living wage) to the various people who help business succeed is, in my opinion, just plain wrong.
Cheryl Klaver
Lac la Hache