Ontario minimum wage increases

Recently, I wrote about the increases in minimum wage in the US. Well, US Companies are not alone in their challenges against minimum wage increases. Companies in Ontario are going to see similar increases over the next 3 years.

While not as bad as their American counterparts, Ontario businesses can expect a 28% increase in minimum wage from now until 2010. The table below demonstrates the rates for various categories across the years:

General Minimum Wage is applicable to all employees except for those that fall in to one of the other categories.

The Student Wage applies to students under 18 years of age that are working during a school holiday or working no more than 28 hours per week during the school year

Liquor Servers (i.e. bartenders & servers) have a lower Minimum Wage as they tend to make up for that in tips.

Obviously these cost increases will have a direct impact on the bottom line, not to mention the usual increases in things like gas, energy, etc. Smart businesses will be working on ways of better controlling expenses and using technology to squeeze more from their resources.

Since labour is the biggest controllable expense, it only makes sense that these companies begin looking at better labor management and reducing things like ‘time paid but not worked’ which can have a significant burden on payroll.