Coffee, Minimum Wage and Benefits
Tim Hortons is a Canadian restaurant chain known for its coffee, doughnuts and connection to Canada's national identity, although Burger King did purchase the company in 2014.
According to The Washington Times the children of the restaurateur who started the company just responded to the Canadian government’s $2.40 increase of their minimum wage. They informed their Ontario Canada employees that they will have to reduce their health and dental benefits and no longer pay them for their breaks in order to comply with the minimum wage increase.
These are exactly the unintended consequences that many of us on the intelligent side have been warning people about. My effort to inform people of the unintended consequences was not to disparage the minimum wage increase but to ensure that people who support these increases fully understand what can come from these increases.
In a letter to their employees they did state the following:
Once the costs of the future are better known we may bring back some or all of the benefits we have had to remove
I understand that everyone wants an increase in their pay, I certainly do. Businesses will pay you what they think the job is worth, what revenues you can produce for them or what they can get away with paying you. That is why it is very important to want someone and their corresponding party who leads a country to be supportive of businesses and remove as many obstacles as possible that those businesses face. Once that is done most businesses will flourish and thus there will be more jobs available forcing companies to pay people more in order to achieve their goals of increasing their business.