Staff Shortages and Profit

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Employers are not philanthropists. Less pay for workers, more profit for them.

We have work but few takers. Employers in the hotel and cottage industry are crying foul and they blame the pandemic. COVID-19 shut down the world in 2020 and governments provided relief funds to ensure that citizens continued to pay rent, buy food and clothes for kids. They called it stimulus money in the U.S.

Employers maintain that workers are used to free government wages, that is why they don’t want to go back to work. First of all, it’s not free. Remember your first job.

You were so excited about your first pay cheque. It didn’t last long because the fat cheque you were expecting turned out to be the size of a top model, very thin, because of taxes. Therefore pandemic money was not a handout.

Secondly, employers cannot blame it for lack of workers. It stopped in 2021. We had to go back to work. However, that money was more than the minimum wage and was proof that workers can be paid more.

The problem is not the stimulus money. It is what is called labour costs. Some industries in Canada do not like the annual adjustment of the minimum wage. They use fancy terms like labour costs affecting the profit margin or revenue.

COUNTRY

MINIMUM WAGE

Sweden

None, unions negotiate wages

United Kingdom

Around nine pounds an hour

Canada, British Columbia Province

$15.65 an hour

Canada, Manitoba Province

$11.95 an hour

Employers should not blame the government for doing their duty, providing life support for taxpayers in time of need. They should revisit capitalism, which calls a human being a ‘cost’ that is sacrificed for profit.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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