by SUSAN MANN
Ontario’s horticultural industry will face a catastrophe if the provincial government doesn’t offset next year’s planned minimum wage increase, concludes a report commissioned by the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association.
The wage is set to go up by 75 cents an hour in March 2010 to $10.25 from the current rate of $9.50. It will be the third year of annual increases that started in 2008. That’s about a 28 per cent increase over a three year period and will cost growers an extra $73 million annually once the increases are fully implemented.
“The minimum wage increase artificially piles sharp labour cost increases on an industry that is already struggling,” it says in the report conducted by George Morris Centre research associates Al Mussell and Claudia Schmidt. The Centre, a Guelph-based independent agri-products think tank, published the report Nov. 19.
Increased labour costs decrease farmers’ profitability, particularly for those growing crops where there aren’t alternatives to manual labour, such as peaches. According to the report, a 28-per-cent increase in manual labour expenses decreases profitability by almost 50 per cent.
The researchers note grower eligibility for stabilization funding will also decrease significantly.
Association CEO Art Smith says farmers aren’t opposed to minimum wage increases: “What we’re opposed to is having it on the backs of the farmers who don’t have a mechanism to recover those costs.”
To offset the wage increase, Mussell and Schmidt recommend the government implement two types of compensation programs – one to offset losses in net income and the other to compensate for lost risk management program eligibility. BF
Comments
These guys should try working for min wage see how far in life they get, then they would welcome the wage hike.
you are 100% right
most of the labour is offshore and the previous wage levels of $8.25 is alot of money. The minimum wage increase you could argue was direly needed for Canadian citizens who have to deal with the high cost of living as Canadian residents. The high cost of living - principally rent, transport, utilities and telecom bills - these are not costs that are a burden to offshore labour. There clearly should have been an exemption to offshore workers - but the public outrage by the left wingers would have been huge. For the produce and treefruit farms, this wage hike is a forced transfer of wealth that make the offshore workers better off than the farmers. Thanks alot McGuinty !!
WHY IS EVERYBODY SO OPPOSED TO RAISING MINIMUM WAGES? I think it is time to fix the roof, and quit patching the floor. Its funny that people at the top want to make more, and have people at the bottom of the ladder struggle even more to make a living. Maybe the people at the top should take a 28% wage cut till they are back down to reality. An example is the MPP's in Ottawa that voted for a raise that was way more than minimum wage was for themselves, and none of the people here in this article had a problem with it. Another is TOP paid CEO's, managers of corporations here in Canada have gotten as much as 400% raises since the mid 1990's. Top paid CEO's, managers on the first day of January have already maid the average Canadian wage for the year. We here in Ontario have well over 50,000 government paid employes that earn well over $100,000 per annum, some over a million dollars with Full benefits something that many people ONLY dream of having, never mind the VERY nice pensions that they retire with. When I see farmers driving brand new $50,000 pickups, new farm equipment, and then cry about money, I'm sorry but it is time that they took a second look at themselves. This past fall when I was trying to explain to a gentlemen we all should only be buying Canadian/American maid products, he was very quick to point out to me that he could take me and show me that farmers are buying off shore vehicles and farm equipment. I believe that maybe the government should keep jobs here in Canada and not give our natural resources to CHINA, JAPAN and other countries around the world and then buy everything back to sell to our own people. In the late 50's and the 60's companies were poorly run but everybody was working and even the companies made a profit. No company ever got rich buy being good to their employes, an example to this is Tim Horton's, they pay minimum wage and still crying poor.
i have no idea what relevance these comments have (re: WHY IS EVERYBODY SO OPPOSED TO RAISING MINIMUM WAGE")
Since when can a commercial fruit grower can tell the market it should pay him more because top paid CEO's get more? Is the farmer supposed to rectify all the problems of capitalism ? When do-gooder bureaucrats up the minimum wage or make farmers less profitable by regulation, or when urban journalists tell farmers not to farm with chemicals, these greenpeace types certainly dont have to operate a farm with the rules they advocate
Getting a salary from his acreage would help - and there's no garranty to break even - in fact break even (no salary) might be the cause for celebration some years. The orchard worker gets his hourly wage no matter what the crop return - same for the diesel and fertilizer supplier The farm making payments on a needed truck or tractor is not a salary.....
No doubt keeping the minimum wage for farmworkers at $8.25 dosnt sold the problems of the Ontario treefruit or produce sector, but it dosnt help. Toronto journalists can feel good about writing up alleged exploitation on the farms with migrant workers. They havnt supervised an offshor crew - I have , and I can tell you its not bad work - and the wage is fine unless you live in Ontario year round and have to deal with this cost of living here.
You have missed the point of what the person was putting across in his comments. The way that I read his comments is that the wealth is all one sided at the top. And just to let you know I am a farmer and the first thing I did when I started, I made sure that my costs didn't kill the profits. The good workers I had are the workers that I paid a good wage to. The point of all of this you have to learn how to add and subtract.
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