Minimum wage increase concerns local Kingston businesses

Many Kingston business owners are worried about the impact of Ontario’s new labour law reforms.

Their biggest concern is the “big hike” in the minimum wage. It will increase to $14 an hour starting in January.

In 2019, the minimum wage will increase again to $15 an hour, then it will be tied to the rate of inflation after that.

Downtown restaurant owner Ed Smith says it’s a lot for small businesses to absorb in a short period of time.

“When you’re talking about a 32 per cent increase over two years, that’s quite substantial so I think every business is going to be challenged.”

That’s what the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce’s Martin Sherris says he’s hearing from other businesses.

He fears wage increases could be offset by reduced hours for employees — or even job losses.

“We hope we’re incorrect on this. We hope that nobody loses their job and businesses don’t slow down their scale-up process and don’t hire people because now they have to go back and look at the cost of doing so.”

Other potential costs employers will have to consider is having to pay employees three hours for cancelling a shift with less than 48 hours notice.

Even city hall is not immune — finance officials estimate the impact of these labour law reforms will add $800,000 to next year’s payroll — mainly for on-call and overtime changes.

Smith says he hasn’t made any firm decisions yet or ruled out any options but he does expect at the very least, menu prices will have to increase.

“It’s probably too early to say whether we’ll have less staff over the course of 2018 and 2019 compared to current levels but I think that’s definitely in play.”

Smith says they’ll also be looking at businesses and staff hours to balance the pay increase.