I thought we were past this nonsense.
I remember back in January, about one week inside the new year, the flurry of press headlines opined the end of retail as we know it. The minimum wage had gone up to $14 per hour, and soon all your stores would be run by robots. Like that recent episode of The X-Files you heard about with the sushi place run by machines and aggressive Internet bots. It was a good one.
But life goes on, it turns out, unsurprisingly, that there's a place for people making a minimum wage in retail in our employment landscape.
That's why I was disappointed to read the following headline in this very publication: “Stone Road Mall to cut hours in attempt to combat minimum wage hike”
Yup, nailed it. The issues right now with brick and mortar retail can all be tied back to the minimum wage increase in Ontario.
That’s why you’ve got malls struggling from one end of North America to the other. Because retail workers in Ontario now make $14 per hour.
Of course, it has nothing to do with how we’re shopping, right? That Internet thing, Amazon? Just a passing fad.
In 2015, Fortune magazine reported that in the next decade about 300 malls across the United States will close, that’s about one-quarter of all the malls in the country.
There’s a phenomenon called “dead malls”, where the loss of an anchor tenant like, say, Zellers, or Sears, or Target, starts a steady decline of other shops closing or moving out of said mall leaving a lot of empty shops and few dedicated die-hard businesses.
How many dead malls do you think the minimum wage increase in Ontario has created? I might remind you that it hasn’t been yet four months yet since the raise went into effect.
To the doubters, I say drive around Guelph some time, because when I’m traveling around town I’m seeing a lot of "help wanted" signs out there. This is to be expected, because April means (usually) nicer weather, more people out and about, vacancies at shops as university students head home, and the end of the typical post-holiday doldrums in sales.
It’s worth noting the paradox: January through March are typically the worst months for sales, so can you adequately measure the long-term effect of the minimum wage increase based on the time of year when business is at its slowest?
I also feel it’s worth pointing out consumer debt in Canada passed $1.8 trillion at the end of 2017. Maybe people aren’t going to Stone Road Mall as much because they’re opening their credit card bill and saying, “Holy $#i%!!!”
I also wouldn’t underestimate either the possibility that the same five cell phone and sunglasses kiosks within 10 yards of each other is not a big consumer draw, but what do I know?
If I sound bitter, I am. Whenever something happens in the retail landscape now: a closure, cut hours, lost sales, the blame is put on the minimum wage increase here in Ontario, when we see every day that the issues with retail are more universal than what’s happening within our own borders.
More often than not though, the fault goes to all those lazy, rudderless, uneducated, unexperienced, unskilled, and greedy retail workers. How dare they make a living wage!
I’m going to say something I think will be really unpopular. People aren’t angry about the minimum wage increase because of the burden on small businesses, or the fact that someone who puts out cereal at the grocery store now makes the same as an electrical apprentice. It’s because making the minimum wage a living wage means the people that work in retail are more equal
It’s harder to scream at someone at Canadian Tire for not having a sale item from the flyer in stock because that person isn’t now desperately grasping on to a job where they make peanuts. There’s a bit of masochism on the part of the customer, who looks at this person struggling to make hours, and realizing that they might really be struggling if a fuss is made that they weren’t committed 110 per cent to your personal satisfaction.
I know, that doesn’t sound like you, but if you work long enough in retail you see it happen. It also happens to you. I once got yelled at by a mother for suspecting her son was trying to steal a DVD while catching him in the act of stealing a DVD. Would she have been as angry with a cop? Of course not.
At the end of the day though, if Stone Road Mall wants to blame the amount paid to the people who work in its stores for cutting hours, that’s fine. In the broader context, my opinion is that it’s incorrect, but it’s fine. The truth, however, is still out there.
