An Ontario restaurant owner says the provinceâs minimum wage increase to $14 an hour and $12.20 for liquor servers means he will now be making a lower hourly wage than his employees.
Stelios Dimakos has owned Shortyâs Grill in Owen Sound, Ont., for 11 years. He says heâs always worked hard to pay his roughly two dozen workers fairly and everyone already made more than the old minimum wage of $11.60 an hour and $10.10 for liquor servers.
But with the more than 20 per cent minimum wage increase overnight, Dimakos says his employees will now be making more per hour than him. He says he puts in about 90 hours of work per week and is the first one at his restaurant and often the last to leave.
âI donât see my kids a lot of the time,â he says.
Dimakos calculates that his wages work out to about $12.50 per hour. The minimum wage for most workers, including dishwashers, rose from $11.60 an hour to $14 an hour in Ontario on Monday â an increase of 21 per cent. Liquor servers saw their minimum wage rise from $10.10 to $12.20 per hour â an increase of 23 per cent. That is what they make before tips, which are often a majority of a serverâs pay.
Dimakos says the combined with another planned increase to $15 and $13.05 for liquor servers on Jan. 1, 2019, will hit his bottom line by about $150,000.
In order to absorb that impact without paying himself even less, Dimakos says he is raising menu prices between about 50 cents to $1 per item.
âWe donât have a choice,â he says. âI donât want to cut staff. I donât want to cut the quality of my product, so thatâs the only solution.â
Prices could go up even more if food costs increase substantially as a result of the minimum wage, Dimakos says. Wages are about 30 per cent of his expenses, and food costs are over 40 per cent.
âSo weâve got a 21 or 22 per cent increase in wages, but what about our raw product?â he says. âIs it going to be another 10 per cent increase there? Thatâs huge in our industry.â
Dimakos says he wants customers to know that heâs not raising prices in order to increase profits. âWeâre just doing this to try and stay alive and survive.â
earlier this year found that the new minimum wage would lead 98 per cent of owners to raise prices, 97 per cent to reduce labour hours, 81 per cent to lay off staff, 74 per cent to explore labour-saving technology and 26 per cent to close at least one location.
The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, an independent watchdog, has said that the minimum wage hikes could result in a loss of 50,000 jobs.
Dimakos says heâs not opposed to the minimum wage going up but that itâs too much to absorb overnight. âIt doesnât give us time to slowly, gradually increase our prices and adjust,â he says.
Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the minimum wage increase in May, with the bulk of the increase coming into effect just months before the provinceâs fixed election date, June 7, 2018.
The opposition Progressive Conservatives have said they would maintain the increase to $14 but raise minimum wages to $15 more gradually, increasing them 25 cents per hour annually until 2022.
B.C.âs New Democratic government is planning to raise the provinceâs minimum wage from $11.35 an hour to $15. that it will set up an armâs-length âfair wages commissionâ to come up with a âplanned, responsible pathâ to a $15 minimum wage.
Alberta, which consistently has the highest weekly wages of any province, from $13.60 to $15 on Oct. 1, 2018.
Ontario Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn told The Canadian Press last week that he doesnât believe the âdoom and gloomâ scenario and that the Liberals are lowering taxes for small businesses to help them cope.
âIt's going to take an adjustment,â he said. âIt's going to take a change.â
With files from The Canadian Press