Editor, The News:
Re: Minimum wage climbs above $10 (The News, March 18).
I currently work at a low paying job, like many other British Colombians, yet I was absolutely repulsed to hear of the upcoming minimum wage increase.
North America has spent years struggling with a recession, and now that we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, Christy Clark decides to drop a boulder in front of it. Employers are struggling as it is to pay their employees, with barely enough left over to pay the bills.
When minimum wage increases by more than $2 an hour, these employers will either go on a firing spree, or simply declare bankruptcy, leaving fewer jobs to go around.
On another note: It is common to have management positions in businesses such as retail that have an hourly wage of $10 an hour, while their young trainees make $8.
It is completely ridiculous to imagine a teenager starting his first ever four-hour shift at McDonald’s, and making the same amount of money as his boss, who’s been there for 10 years, and had to earn his $10 an hour the hard way: work ethic.
The fact is, those who are making $8 an hour completely deserve it.
Ms. Clark didn’t do her homework on this one. At the risk of entering another recession, she decided to win the hearts of British Colombians by pretending to care. What she didn’t take into consideration is that those hearts she has won are not even of legal voting age.
It’s time to start pleasing the voters instead of the 14-year-old girl doing her nails at the drive-through who recognizes you as the one who invented the “Oreo.”
Denin Ulriksen
Pitt Meadows