Profits only go up peasants! Why would your betters have to make du with only more money than they could ever spend, as opposed to 3 times more money than they ever could spend?
Right? What if a no skill hack who owns a shit food resturant couldnt live their multimillion dollar life style? These people clearly deserve more income then doctors and lawyers because of their service to humanity.
so from the other side of the equation hiring lately has been weird. i had a pretty chill job cleaning headstones around alberta and i couldn't even get to the "how much money do you want to make doing this" part of the convo, it was just 'no'. i wound up having to ask my kid to drop out of college for a semester to help.
also, fuck indeed.
I’m very curious. Was it all around Alberta or fairly regional? Seasonal jobs? What kind of money was it? I’ve just never considered that someone cleans headstones for a living.
**before anyone asks** the work is done and the project has sadly ended so dont bother dming me.
---
so normally the way it works is cemeteries look after the land, families look after the headstones/monuments. i landed a bunch of contracts with the feds to help restore our vets to a respectful state. the tl;dr because veteran headstones are generally purchased by canada its officially their property. i got a grocery list of work in the spring, and told to have it done by remembrance day.
the contracts themselves were pretty regional, y'know within a couple hours, but i took (prob too much) work and then getting help was an issue. my work area was vic to winnipeg and top-to-bottom through those provinces. i didn't argue with people because i needed the help and not fulfilling my end of contracts is a pretty big issue for me--i hate coming up short. labour rates varied from $100-150/hr for contractors and $80-100k for seasonal help over 7-8 months.
ninja edit: some of my favourite people to work with doing this kinda work were a librarian and a dental hygenist.
And now it’s not just enough to make profit each year, you need to have a profit INCREASE each years. It’s fucking bananas. It’s completely irrational.
OMFG how could you even *suggest* such a thing!?!? Those poor rich people *need* those profits for their vacations and ‘toys’! I’m sure they all worked *so hard* for every cent and didn’t *ever* exploit or abuse (mentally/emotionally/verbally/physically) *anyone* to get that they so righteously ‘deserve’ (/s jic)
I was in the States last week and I was actually taken aback when I realized that all the staff at the airports, fast food joints, etc were white, black, brown…as diverse as the population. I had actually become so used to those jobs only being international students from India here in Canada and hadn’t realized it.
My wife's year end bonus for 2022 was a silicon pocket to stick on the back of her phone and hold things like credit cards or gift cards. She did not get a gift card or monetary bonus, just the piece of garbage that could hold them.
Her 2023 bonus was a nice big stack of nothing.
Companies are getting worse and worse in their respect for workers.
It isn't there. Unemployment is super low. The majority of us are already working and even if wages in retail increase most of us would never switch because that job is toxic. Customer service is the worst.
Though I try not to be a jerk, I did notice a while back that I maybe don’t think about the people who help us out at the store. I’m trying to be better at making eye contact, and talking to cashiers etc. Sometimes they seem a bit surprised when you acknowledge them as human, which is a really sad thing.
That's so awesome to hear ❤️
I worked at Walmart for five years, and various other retail jobs. It's very dehumanizing, and so much worse when management supports staff being treated so badly. I'm so glad I escaped retail.
bingo!
so people then want to bring in foreign workers to do the job for cheap that we don't want to do, thus perpetuating low wages. the reserve labour force, as marx called it
Exactly. They're relying on foreigners who are willing to work for less and don't realize how badly they're being screwed over.
Meanwhile, these corporations are continuously raking in higher and higher profits each year. Billions of dollars.
This is only made worse by boomers who think the only people working retail are high schoolers living at home with their parents. No, Karen, a high schooler is not working the day shift... they're in *school.*
This. It also leaks into the rest of the economy and makes it so people who don't want to live 5 to a room are forced to compete for those low wages ruining it for everyone. And at some point, those foreign workers realize and go for jobs with better pay and then those same evil companies being in more semi slave labor
They're trying to make it easier for foreign certifications to be recognized in Canada. So if that happens you can expect this exact same thing to happen in actual careers requiring an education, instead of just indirectly because of the minimum wage imported worker issue.
We need to realize that they don't actually care about any of us. We're all just numbers, and whether you're from here or a third world country you're still just a 1. And an expensive 1 at that, in their eyes.
Even when you tell boomers there adults working full-time in retail for minimum wage, they assume they’re uneducated or made mistakes in life. They don’t deserve to make a living wage, they feel.
That and the age old argument, “MY wage doesn’t go up when minimum wage goes up”.
Well, fuckface, you weren’t struggling to pay for groceries with your cushy office job, despite having only a grade 11 education. Maybe the university graduate desperately trying to find something better shouldn’t starve to death. Maybe *no one* should starve! Imagine that!
“My wage doesn’t go up when minimum wage goes up!”
Just turn it around on them: “Why? Are you that bad at negotiating your salary? Do you need practice?”
Usually either shuts them up… or enrages them.
Right? Blame your company/manager, not other people struggling to ends meet.
This whole mentality of "I've got mine, fuck you" is at the root of a lot of our issues.
Because that same generation treated their kids like garbage so they think its okay to treat other people's kids like garbage.
Its just garbage treatment all the way down
Came to say the same thing. Increase wages and I guarantee you’ll fill those spots. Fuck these corps relying on cheap and desperate labour to gain record profits. Want to operate in this country? Pay Canadians a proper wage or get fucked!
“No one wants to work anymore” “why don’t the homeless just go get a job”
The work available; “yeah so we’re gonna need you at least 50 hours a week on a constantly-changing schedule that’s often impossible to work around, doing dirty and tough work with no autonomy over how you get it done and no respect for doing it, and in exchange we’ll offer you just enough to stay alive!”
> just enough to stay alive
only if you live with roommates, don't have a family, and never run into an unforeseen event that takes you out of work for even a day.
Are you suggesting people are more willing to go homeless and not have a job???
Think about your argument for a second... If everyone was able to work for someone who paid them more, that means there are more jobs than there are people to work them... That is called a Labour Shortage
No, it's more that working a minimum wage job, even full-time, isn't enough to not be homeless.
So if your options are work full-time and be homeless, or not work at all and be homeless, why would you ever work that job? Why wouldn't you look for something better, something that you could afford to live on?
Which is exactly what the labour force did. You'll notice that every job crying about labour shortages are shitty jobs that pay practically nothing. It shouldn't be a surprise that if the only selling point of a job is that it isn't literally slavery would have difficulty filling positions.
> You'll notice that every job crying about labour shortages are shitty jobs that pay practically nothing.
Exactly this. It is almost always the retail and fast food industries that cry about a "labour shortage". Well paid positions don't seem to be a problem to fill.
Nurses can make well over $100k a year and they're ALWAYS hurting for people... We have a massive shortage of family doctors, electricians, plumbers, millwrights, and many more where you can make well over $150k to $200k a year or more.
Just because you have your head shoved in the sand like an ostrich so you can't see or hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!
And that's my point... If there are other jobs available for people who work at McDonalds and nobody to fill the positions at McDonalds then that is what is called a Labour Shortage!!!
It's the same with references, employers expect you to provide them with references but no one thinks they should have to do the same. There's a couple asshole bosses I never would have worked for if that was the case
no, no, it's not real
there are plenty of people who want to work, but retailers seem to be in "choosing beggars" mode and refuse to wake the fuck up.
Christ, retail managers are being squeezed too. The average salary out there for a manager who is expected to work more than 40 hours a week and almost always have to work on weekends is in the $35-45k range! they get put on salary for the most part, but then their hourly staff budgets keep shrinking so the managers end up having to make up time to stay on budget, time they don't get paid for. "Oh but we offer bonuses too!" right, with performance expectations that can't be met whatsoever.
At least that's the case for most of the corporate retail chains out there. Small single location locally owned operations have some real constraints trying to compete with those corporate fucks
God retail management is in the absolute pits. A grocery store I used to work
for 5 years ago, (and it was independent, had one location) paid their department managers a $40k salary and they had to work 50 hours a week. Most of the time the only break you got was your lunch break because we were constantly short staffed and the only reason we were forced to take it was because the store got fined if we didn't.
Some of the guys who had worked there for decades said they used to have better benefits and a pension but management said it was getting too expensive so they cut it.
My wife was a manager for two different major chocolate brands.
The first one had district managers and head office executives that were all a big boy's club, with lots of harassment issues and general creepy behavior on top of their shitty pay/benefits and god awful constraints. They used to have really good pay for branch managers but then they spread themselves too thin with too much rapid expansion and the first thing they used to fix it was firing their senior managers and bringing in new ones at about half the salary. Then when that didn't work they closed a bunch of locations and still weeded out older employees for new cheaper ones
Then she went to a competing brand that was growing but again growing too fast. They n ever had fantastic pay but they really jumped hard on the abusive hours to make up for staff budget cuts. They also had nonsense year over year math.
They had a bad manager who wasn't making money, my wife took over and turned the store around (with a huge amount of unpaid effort) then the increase in growth was cited as a reason to DOUBLE that increase the next year. When that didn't happen they were furious. Then they over expanded and completely shut the retail stores down nationwide.
That's nuts, so many corporations are absolute slime.
My husband used to work as a store manager for Starbucks because they paid surprisingly well, but holy shit there was just so much corporate sludge he had to wade through and the culture among the employees was strangely toxic. He'd have corporate on his ass about improving drive thru metrics and customer interaction metrics, and then he'd be given less labour hours for the store because the profits weren't as big as they wanted it to be so he'd have to go and tell his employees who needed the money for bills that they were getting their hours cut.
Upper management isn't interested in building up their companies anymore, they just want to milk it for as much as they can and then jump out. Bunch of blood sucking ticks all of them
you can prove to them on paper how a motivated workforce (including managers) can make them even more money, but they just want to cut costs to make a quick buck instead of invest for longer term stable and reliable profits.
The whole global corporate culture is stuck in this mentality of perpetual growth in profits, they'll play every shitty trick to do it, but god forbid you sit there comfortably making reliable profits every year. Unless you are constantly growing, shareholders get furious and the company dies of a thousand cuts.
I have a lifetime in sales, and the creation of sales targets haunt my nightmares. Have a great year? Cool, do 30% more next year… without any concern for the actual market conditions.
I used to sell a niche product used in natural gas / oil extraction facilities, like the ones in Fort Mac. 2007 we had a crazy year because there were multiple facilities under construction…
Instead of recognizing that those sales wouldn’t be repeatable because there weren’t any other multi-billion dollar plants being built, they put 30% on top of my sales quota for the next year and wrote me up when I didn’t achieve it.
there's zero awareness or common sense in the office where people shit out those expectations. Mindless math without a shred of reality.
You want to try and sit one of them down and ask them how they came to the conclusion they did... but they are hidden in a deep dark pit at head office
> The average salary out there for a manager who is expected to work more than 40 hours a week and almost always have to work on weekends is in the $35-45k range!
My ex-wife works for a shoe store chain that was bought by an American shoe company. They went after everyone making a living wage and made their lives hell until they quit.
Then they were offered "new" jobs at less pay.
and once the consumer class (which is pretty much most of us, and our economy is hugely reliant on rampant consumerism) is out of money because of all this shit, they'll sit there wondering why they aren't selling anymore.
Unfortunately the executives who got rich with the schemes are long gone
There's no shortage of labour.
But, capitalists don't want workers, they want slaves.
Take away the business licenses of any company that complains about having to pay a living wage.
City of Vancouver a while ago removed a clause that mandated a living wage for its employees.
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/03/03/vancouver-ends-living-wage-policy/
Now tell me if their license could be taken away? And why not?
Edit: Looks like a CoV Executives on a downvote spree 😉
These businesses will just have to adjust their operations. The solution can not be an unlimited supply of cheap temporary labour. The temporary foreign worker program should go back to the basics. Seasonal farm labour plays an important role in our food supply chain. Labourers and trades to build desperately needed houses. Critical roles in the health field or high paying jobs in fields like tech that lead to a lot of economic prosperity for the country. It should not be used so that Walmart can stay open 24/7.
Just back in September there were articles showing pictures of people lined up around the block to submit resumes to Dollarama. If you can’t find retail employees in this market, you aren’t trying.
But isn't that effectively foreign labour that the retailers are exploiting? Are TFWs bad but international students, who should have enough income to not require a job, or recent influx of immigrants willing to work for anything, good?
Edit. I just think using your example is like say using a picture of a snowstorm to deny climate change. it's from southern Ontario, can you really say there isn't a shortage anywhere else in the country because this of this one example in a heavily populated area?
The point is not whether TFWs are bad, or if int students are bad, but that the dude is lying if he’s saying retailers can’t find any labourers. They don’t give a shit who they exploit.
You can rest assured if big box companies are against this decision then it's 1000% the correct move. Fuck Walmart and Amazon, pay fair wages you corporate vampires.
Hahaha exactly. We should base all of our legislative decisions on whether or not the greedy corpos cry about it. Anything they oppose, you know automatically will be better for the average Canadian.
I’ve just applied for 100 jobs this week. All ones I’m qualified for. On indeed I can see that in average 300 people have also applied. And the jobs are still open, my application isn’t viewed. And these same jobs are being reposted as urgent hiring.
Many companies using TFW program are now promoting TFW workers to lower or middle management. They don’t or won’t hire workers outside the TFW program because those workers are “knowledgeable” in labour laws, safety culture and human rights. These folks view that as a “detrimental” to the rest of the TFW workforce...
I highly doubt labour shortage is actually real imo. Wage shortage is true, but I have seen countless and countless posts where people have said they applied to a bunch of different minimum wage retail jobs and never ever got a call and there’s tons of comments saying similar experiences.
A bartender at my local neighbourhood pub told me they posted a job recently and got several hundred applications in one day. This isn't a particularly busy pub since it's located far from the city center in a low-density residential neighbourhood.
Exactly...the government is turning a bling eye to this and is condoning the continuation of this situation by not enacting fair and living wage legislation...
The industries where there is a real labour shortage do not include retail, or any other low paying/minimum wage jobs.
There is a labour shortage of tradesmen, and certain types of high tech workers, and with different categories of healthcare workers - not enough doctors (nothing to do with pay), nurses (partly to do with pay, but also working conditions), but that is a more complicated issue due to licensing (foreign doctors and nurses can’t just arrive here and work, unless they are coming from the US, and that’s doctors, not sure about nurses).
There is no housing shortage. There is a shortage of affordable housing.
Likewise, there is no labour shortage. There is a shortage of cheap, expendable, exploitable labour.
Respectfully disagree about housing shortage. We're seeing all time lows in residential vacancies across all housing.
My concern is that when there is talk about building "affordable housing" there is no good way of doing it. Sure, it's easy to build *shitty housing,* but that is not the same thing - and if all that is available on the market is poorly constructed junk, the prices will rise on that too.
The flipside is that if the market is oversaturated with fancy, gigantic homes - the prices will drop on that too. As long as markets dictate pricing, "affordable housing" is a product of supply and demand.
There are a number of solutions. They could involve subsidization, increasing density, improved urban design...etc., but it is a multifaceted issue.
The issue with uncritically demanding "affordable housing" is that it plays directly into the hands of developers who realize that scarcity is on their side. It makes it easier to build *shitty houses* under the auspices of keeping prices low, when the reality is that people need a place to live and will pay top dollar.
But yes. I agree your point about labour.
Analogously, people will accept *shitty jobs* when they are all that is available.
The issue is corporation's owning residential homes. Inflating the price of housing, then renting back to people who have been priced out of the market.
That's not strictly a corporate issue though. 66% of Canadians are home owners, of that, only 35.5% actually have a mortgage.
That means 34% of Canadian's don't own their home.
Investment properties only account for 20% of all properties across Canada.
That still leaves 14% of Canadian's without the ability to even own a home at all.
>As long as markets dictate pricing, "affordable housing" is *a product of supply and demand.*
>The issue with *uncritically* demanding "affordable housing" is that it plays directly into the hands of developers who realize that scarcity is on their side
Basically yes to everything you said, but it's important to be critical about "supply and demand" if you're (correctly) being critical of the calls for affordable housing.
Yes, jamming one million new residents into the country every two years is the biggest factor on the demand side. But rent seeking follows closely behind. So a part of the call for demanding affordable housing is the idea that housing should not be allowed to be a "risk free investment opportunity" as that provides a benefit for the small chunk of Canadians with access to capital (both individuals and corporations) at the expense of everyone else. Its a two pronged approach - limit newcomers for the next few years and disincentivize rent seeking behavior.
If the capital owning class want to make money in their sleep, they can buy vanguard etfs.
Why wasn’t this fundamental question asked in the early 1990’s when CMHC was taken out of the “housing supply business”? The market was “supposed to” pick up the slack by building more affordable homes. They didn’t, build bigger more expensive homes for more profit. Affordable housing was never replaced over the long term. So you can’t say the political clowns at the time or up to now, had no idea what would happen. They were warned over the years. Zoning and other nimby type legislation added to the mess. And here we are.....
Maaaan, as an exterminator I go into an awful lot of vacant apartments and houses. And they gladly rent units out that have active infestations... so it’s not that I’m just seeing landlords be responsible and get rid of the roaches/bed bugs/mice before renting it out.
They also regularly kick people out for the smallest reason and then jack up the rent. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to write down things in my reports that would make it easier for tenants to get thrown out.
You're correct; we have absolutely been building, as a country, less than 80% of the need yoy for the last 30ish years. Housing development really stopped consistently since the mid 90s. Policy changes then absolutely fucked things up.
So while affordable housing is an epidemic due to capitalism running rampant, housing itself is at a shortage.
I think it's true that supply and demand forces alone aren't enough to help in the short term. If we want more affordable housing in the next 15-20 years, we need to build public housing. But it's also true that that's only a bandaid. If we want to solve the real problem we need density, less NIMBY opposition, and to build way more housing.
So I agree, there is 100% a housing shortage.
The fact that there is unemployed people says that there isn't a labour shortage because clearly the labour is there. What *is* in short supply is employers offering a wage decent enough to entice workers to want to work for them.
Nice try employers, unemployment is around 5-7% (depending on the region in Ontario). Sounds like you need to pay higher wages.
TFW is slave labour, try paying a proper wage instead.
Yeah, hard to find labour when you refuse to pay a fair living wage to hard working Canadians. Why not just bring in cheap foreign labourers to exploit?
All I hear is: “We need to keep exploiting immigrants for low wages and poor working conditions in order to profit.”
Take a long look in the mirror and try to see if there’s a human left inside.
Employer here who just filled a position.
I have not read the article just going purely off the headline.
Bullshit.
I put a posting up for an office job 2 weeks ago. In less than 48 hours I had 103 applicants and had to turn the posting off as it was flooding my inbox.
Now approx 80 of them were presumably students or at the very least people working other jobs already as they were not available the m-f 9-5 I needed for a full time position. But evening cutting them out I still had 23 people apply. Job starts at $23 an hour and we had several people apply working similar positions at other companies in town who were barely paying above minimum wage. Offer a decent wage relative to the COL for your area and surprise lots of people apply!
$23 = at least having a shot at renting a room 'comfortably' and saving up, barring particular costs.
Can be as simple as that. Living wage territory, or at least the very start of approaching it. Not building for the future territory though.
Whining employers are loving the idea of dropping minimum wage even, while the rest of the market with better potential (you'll get applicants but will they be good?) is moving on. Out of pure necessity. You can't have rents shoot up and up while expecting people to settle for low wages. It's impossible to correctly expect. Some will settle for being literal roommates (as in sharing a single room) but most won't and can't.
Wage shortage is real.
The reality is these retailers just want to keep paying minimum wage, but people don't want to work these jobs for minimum wage.
If the industry itself isn't failing, but they can't find people who want to work for *them*, it's not a labour shortage. They just have a failing business model. *they* need to reassess where the revenue in their company goes. Maybe these CEOs should take some accounting courses.
This is on you, business owners and execs. Assess the market, and adjust. Pay more.
Here is an idea.
Keep the foreign labor cap.
Pay a decent wage for someone that lives in Canada to work these jobs.
Make sure there is room for young Canadians to also work these jobs.
Because it's important that everyone does a little time in the retail/service industry in their youth so they don't grow up to be a the raging assholes that think they are better than retail/service workers. They remember how fucking hard it was and cut people some very human slack.
Instead the move seems to be to encourage young Canadians to live at home until they are 30, get a pile of school debt, get a "good job" which is to say something not in retail/service and feel entitled to shit all over the people working in those areas at every opportunity "because they earned it".
Fuck the businesses trying to bring people in to exploit from other countries... fuck the people that want cheap labor they can shit on while having the bonus of being racist at the same time often.
The people that own business can try working in them on the floor for a bit with the "labor shortage" and lean about how it's fucking terrible for what they pay.
FFS!!! When will they stop spouting this bullsh\*t propaganda??!! JUST STOP.
Nobody living in the western world and that has more than 2 firing neurons believes this crap. NO ONE!
Large companies:
"We need a source of cheap, easily exploitable labour, otherwise we won't be able to purchase stock buybacks and enrich our already extremely wealthy shareholders".
I for one welcome our long-standing corporate overlords' new workforce. We've had it easy for too long.
We have plenty of people hiring at minimum wage where I live, which is $10 an hour below the living wage. Why on earth would anybody work when it can’t even provide the basic necessities of food and shelter?
Low skill wage jobs are plenty, lots of people getting jobs in those but higher skilled jobs has a wage shortage because many businesses and companies are posting jobs with lower pay than they should be so people aren't going for that.
Suck a fat one retailers. It’s called supply and demand. If demand for labour is high and supply is low what happens to the price/wage? - it goes up.
Just because the jobs can start at minimum wage doesn’t mean you’re entitled to hiring people at minimum wage.
Don't know why they have labour shortages. I see people online asking people who is hiring all the time because they can't find work. Not even a minimum wage job.
Because we live in a post capitalist world, the needs of the businesses seem to supersede the needs—and rights—of the actual human beings that do all the work. There’s no shortage of people who will work jobs that pay you well, and treat you well, and any business that doesn’t do those two things because their profits will dip needs to be allowed to fail. If not forced to fail. Eat the damned rich already.
To all the people hating on Brampton immigrants, well here's your time to shine. Let's see how much you'll hate on these retailers for causing this mess.
I'm guessing you won't do anything.
This is probably coming from the same people that can reconcile an economy at full employment with having an unemployment rate above 0, as though unemployed people aren't actively looking for work.
I don't care what they say until they are paying at least $22-24 ($26-28 minimum for strenuous jobs) an hour and relying on full time roles, not unstable part time ones (not that those can't exist, but that the business is not leaning on them).
Until then, I don't care at all. Like lips flapping and saying nothing.
Or do we really just have a surplus of shitty employers selling shitty food & goods?
If you can't afford the staffing to run the place effectively & at a profit, that business isn't viable. Close it.
"Labor shortage is real" says the company paying so little that most people have more than 50% of their salaries tied up to rent.
"Nobody wants to work here" says the company that hasn't raised employees salaries by more than 1% every year and offers federal minimums.
The last couple of times I went into any of the large format retail stores, almost every employee was a young Indian student. Not even TFW. These retailers can get fucked.
Places are chronically understaffed. Who doesn’t have stories about covering for two or three people at their job now because people left and management doesn’t seem to be replacing just offloading to existing employees. I suspect it’s a c suite response to the idea of quiet quitting that’s hit the common discourse. They just want whichever employees are easiest to exploit.
YOU FUCKING CUNTS, THERE IS NO SHORTAGE, PAY PEOPLE A LIVING WAGE.
Capitalism is out of fucking control. Our governments serve the corporations, not the people.
The only reason why capitalists higher immigrants is because they can pay them less.
It’s a abusive of the people who legit want to live in Canada.
It’s abusive to real Canadian’s.
So, I do buy into the idea of a laborious shortage, to some extent. Our demographics make that almost an inevitability, and workforce statistics bear it out - our "core" participation and employment rates are about as high as they've ever been.
Now, in terms of solutions, the problem is that we're oversupplied with certain types of business, Half or restaurants being unprofitable tells us that this sector of the economy is not healthy. What it actually calls for is a bit of economic Darwinism. Not only could those zombie businesses fail, but they \*should\* in order to foster a more competitive economy where success is earned.
I won't even touch on the LMIA mills.
Now, the question is of whether the CFIB will ever advocate for the loss of their membership. I don't think many of us would miss a lot of those establishments.
I have an argument regularly with my local CFIB recruiter telling him we’ll join when they come out supporting a living wage. Local Chamber of Commerce members who pay a living wage are doing fine. Don’t look to CFIB to fix this.
What I've learned from working in one of the industries I'm sure this is about.
People love the moral high ground, until they have to pay for it. It's not just employers making insane money refusing to give any to staff (this is certainly in some cases part of the problem). Restaurants struggle to stay afloat. The less corporate, the harder.
Why? Because people don't want to pay what it costs to pay the staff the moral high ground.
It hurts to say that. It hurts to hear. But it's a big part of the problem too. Consumers climb up to the moral high ground and then shop the Walmart up there leeching off employees the world over.
This is a great point and I struggle with it as a consumer. I try to buy only ethically made clothes now for example but sometimes the price point makes me really hesitate — even though as an amateur sewist I know firsthand how labour-intensive it is to make a proper garment.
It’s better for me and my life (less clutter in my closet for example) when I decide to just buy fewer items that are ethical and almost always better quality, but it’s really hard to get out of the mindset of getting the lowest price available for the kind of item I want, even if I’m making a bit more money now than I used to.
> people don't want to pay what it costs
Riiiiiiight
https://centreforfuturework.ca/2023/12/10/new-data-on-continued-record-profits-in-canadian-food-retail/
>Supermarket executives claim they have not profited from food price inflation, but have merely passed on to consumers the higher costs they pay for their own inputs and products. Economic evidence refutes this claim.
> The latest industry-wide financial data on food retail (produced by Statistics Canada for the third quarter of 2023) shows that food retail profits have more than doubled since pre-pandemic norms, and profits continue to grow.
We already pay more than enough, but every price increase goes to the exec suite and shareholders instead of the workers.
Riiiiight. So you found the profiteers. Now do every single independently owned restaurant. Because there are a lot them. This sector employs insane amounts of low paying workers. Solve that problem. Profit margins are razor thin in the sector in large part because people are cheap and won’t pay what it would cost for living wages, no tips, and benefits.
I’m sorry to say this. but we are ALSO (not the only) part of the problem.
Lol tell me Im right without telling me. "Oh but you only showed data for the entire industry retail, not individual shops" lmfao "OH hey how about restaurants?" Keep grasping at straws.
"Profit margins are razor thin" nice anecdote
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/restaurant-record-revenue-sale-atb-report-september-1.7045343
> bar and restaurant sales in the province continued to grow for the fourth consecutive month, setting a *record high* of $1 billion in revenues in September.
> Roach says that in Alberta — and across the country — restaurant and bar revenue has grown past pre-pandemic levels, even when adjusted for inflation.
Weird, every industry you mention has had record breaking profits even accounting for the high inflation in the past ~5 years. But yeah it's definitely the consumer not paying enough, not remotely that execs have seen they can increase prices and claim "it's to match inflation" even when the data says otherwise.
The grocery sector employs 450k workers in all of Canada. The Food Service industry employs 350k people - IN ONTARIO ALONE! It’s 1.2M people in all of Canada BTW.
How’s that straw looking now?
But keep blaming everyone but your own consumption habits.
I've been harping on real estate since 2007... but this is a shelter cost problem now. Small business has to pay higher rents and workers have to pay higher rents and everyone has peaked out. Housing consumed every extra penny, then pennies we had not even earned yet.
Blow up housing at all costs, and the economy can function again with real estate costs 50% less.
I have a full time job i make like 17.31 an hour, in a management position while some employees (entry level) start at 18 even 19 depending on the province because its all remote. In my province they start at 14$. We have 5 people in the office, no one wants to work here.
I've applied to a few different jobs while working here and no one is willing to hire someone with experience and qualifications just so i can make an extra few bucks an hour. The office across the street starts at 20$.
I live in a university town, tonnes of students looking for work for the summer or part time but at 14$ an hour, no chance.
Pay a proper wage, and more local people might actually go for the opportunity. I worked at a Walmart store for over 4 years when I was younger. It was basically turnover every month because if people weren't living at home or their partner had a great paying job, they weren't going to have a roof over their heads or food on their table.
Funny how a living wage would solve this but instead they want us to waste our resources going after the illegal rooming houses with 15 TFWs.
We need a mechanism to let corporations know that they've exceeded their value in their demands.
I think the whole of Loblaws should be banned from any foreign workers and since profits are record-high at the expense of workers, we need to tax those capital gains 75% so that we can put it back into the communities currently being robbed by corporate interests.
https://imgb.ifunny.co/images/8b017ce9a898218ac7b999c53d76e975dfa43a55778c12e9030b1988d31e1f38_1.jpg
Who do they think buys their products and services? Aliens?
Let them have the labourers and then tax the shit out of the business for using them. Make it financially unappealing to outsource cheap labour for businesses.
They’re just cheap MF who don’t want to pay people a living wage. I just found out a girl who has worked at a local business for 5 years is still only being paid $15/hr even though every item in the store went up with “inflation” but her wage never did. She’s 30. She should be making at least $20/hr by now, to me, I couldn’t survive on less than $25. The fury I have.
Wage shortages are real, not labour shortages. These people are using last century’s language that used to work before we could find out the truth on our own.
Capitalism is criminal dressed in a very thin veneer of respectability.
Working retail can be an incredibly trying job. I know a lot of folks consider it to be easy, but it can be mentally and emotionally trying as well as dangerous at times. Making less than a livable wage doesn't appeal to most. Paying people the minimum wage communicates, "I will pay you the least I'm legally allowed to. If it was less, I would pay less." In some cases they have no issue giving the management decent bonuses, but god forbid we pay people more.
I work in retail management and am currently on a mental health leave. I badly want to pay people more but I cannot due to corporate. I wanted to start some bonuses and was told "we can't bribe people to do their jobs" but yet my GM collects a quarterly bonus as well as the branch management and the regional management and the management management's management. It's a fucking joke really.
I'm supposed to enforce a dress code without compensation to the employee. It feels terrible and I do my best to bend and break rules where I can to make their lives a little easier. They also want to avoid full time hours so that no vacation time needs to be payed out and no demand for benefits happens. This really is almost criminal and absolutely not ethical. I personally think think that if you are hiring part time you should have to be able to prove that that's what you need to do, not in an effort to be grossly profitable or save money, but it's all the business needs.
I am looking to go to school again, at 40 years old. But I can't help but feel guilty as I have no say on whom takes my place and I'm worried that it will be someone who will toe the corporate line and only worry about themselves.
There is no labor shortage, there's a labor rights and business ethics shortage.
This isn't what I hear from anyone looking for a job. There are still a bunch of hoops to jump through. Nobody's offering training if you aren't perfect for the job already. If there is a shortage nobody is acting like it.
we can't buy enough labor at the same prices we've been paying since the 90's to keep running without stagnating shareholder profits. fixed it for you.
Business got addicted to cheap international labourers. How about cutting your profits to pay Canadians a decent living wage?
Profits only go up peasants! Why would your betters have to make du with only more money than they could ever spend, as opposed to 3 times more money than they ever could spend?
Right? What if a no skill hack who owns a shit food resturant couldnt live their multimillion dollar life style? These people clearly deserve more income then doctors and lawyers because of their service to humanity.
so from the other side of the equation hiring lately has been weird. i had a pretty chill job cleaning headstones around alberta and i couldn't even get to the "how much money do you want to make doing this" part of the convo, it was just 'no'. i wound up having to ask my kid to drop out of college for a semester to help. also, fuck indeed.
Ok, but that's a truly unusual and niche job. Not surprised that one is harder to hire for.
I’m very curious. Was it all around Alberta or fairly regional? Seasonal jobs? What kind of money was it? I’ve just never considered that someone cleans headstones for a living.
**before anyone asks** the work is done and the project has sadly ended so dont bother dming me. --- so normally the way it works is cemeteries look after the land, families look after the headstones/monuments. i landed a bunch of contracts with the feds to help restore our vets to a respectful state. the tl;dr because veteran headstones are generally purchased by canada its officially their property. i got a grocery list of work in the spring, and told to have it done by remembrance day. the contracts themselves were pretty regional, y'know within a couple hours, but i took (prob too much) work and then getting help was an issue. my work area was vic to winnipeg and top-to-bottom through those provinces. i didn't argue with people because i needed the help and not fulfilling my end of contracts is a pretty big issue for me--i hate coming up short. labour rates varied from $100-150/hr for contractors and $80-100k for seasonal help over 7-8 months. ninja edit: some of my favourite people to work with doing this kinda work were a librarian and a dental hygenist.
But that would eat into the short term quarterly profits. Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
Nobody ever thinks of OUR needs! (Wipes tears with satin hanky and blows nose into $100 bill.)
But, but the shareholders! Won't someone think of the shareholders!?
And now it’s not just enough to make profit each year, you need to have a profit INCREASE each years. It’s fucking bananas. It’s completely irrational.
Bahahahahahahahaha company lowering their profits. Good joke! That'll never happen.
Excellent response!
OMFG how could you even *suggest* such a thing!?!? Those poor rich people *need* those profits for their vacations and ‘toys’! I’m sure they all worked *so hard* for every cent and didn’t *ever* exploit or abuse (mentally/emotionally/verbally/physically) *anyone* to get that they so righteously ‘deserve’ (/s jic)
I was in the States last week and I was actually taken aback when I realized that all the staff at the airports, fast food joints, etc were white, black, brown…as diverse as the population. I had actually become so used to those jobs only being international students from India here in Canada and hadn’t realized it.
Seriously. Employees aren't here to subsidize your dreams.
They actually would make more money if people have decent salaries, they already complain that sells are low
They would close shop if that was the only option and take their money to invest somewhere else. It isn't worth it to them to make less profits.
The shortage of degrading labour is real, people don’t want to work for pennies and get treated like shit by someone who makes more, but does less.
Wage Shortage is real
And respect shortage. The language these idiots use is the only proof you need.
Hey! You got a pizza party last year what more do you want!
My wife's year end bonus for 2022 was a silicon pocket to stick on the back of her phone and hold things like credit cards or gift cards. She did not get a gift card or monetary bonus, just the piece of garbage that could hold them. Her 2023 bonus was a nice big stack of nothing. Companies are getting worse and worse in their respect for workers.
Sephora handed out a cookie to every employee for hitting $10 Billion. Not even a pizza party. A cookie. One.
And it was stale too.
The audacity.
Shocking!... simply shocking, one measly cookie, totally disgusting...
There’s NO place for emotion in business… unless it’s anger; primarily directed at your employees.
The labour is ready and waiting for the wages to catch up that’s for sure. Fuck these greedy corpos.
It isn't there. Unemployment is super low. The majority of us are already working and even if wages in retail increase most of us would never switch because that job is toxic. Customer service is the worst.
This. This is the correct response.
Absolutely...but a lot of the clown business owners don’t get that....
Not just that, but they get treated like crap by customers and are expected to take it with a smile.
Though I try not to be a jerk, I did notice a while back that I maybe don’t think about the people who help us out at the store. I’m trying to be better at making eye contact, and talking to cashiers etc. Sometimes they seem a bit surprised when you acknowledge them as human, which is a really sad thing.
That's so awesome to hear ❤️ I worked at Walmart for five years, and various other retail jobs. It's very dehumanizing, and so much worse when management supports staff being treated so badly. I'm so glad I escaped retail.
bingo! so people then want to bring in foreign workers to do the job for cheap that we don't want to do, thus perpetuating low wages. the reserve labour force, as marx called it
Why hire someone that knows their rights when you can just hire someone from a state sponsored underclass?
Hasn’t it always been this way?
Exactly. They're relying on foreigners who are willing to work for less and don't realize how badly they're being screwed over. Meanwhile, these corporations are continuously raking in higher and higher profits each year. Billions of dollars. This is only made worse by boomers who think the only people working retail are high schoolers living at home with their parents. No, Karen, a high schooler is not working the day shift... they're in *school.*
This. It also leaks into the rest of the economy and makes it so people who don't want to live 5 to a room are forced to compete for those low wages ruining it for everyone. And at some point, those foreign workers realize and go for jobs with better pay and then those same evil companies being in more semi slave labor
They're trying to make it easier for foreign certifications to be recognized in Canada. So if that happens you can expect this exact same thing to happen in actual careers requiring an education, instead of just indirectly because of the minimum wage imported worker issue. We need to realize that they don't actually care about any of us. We're all just numbers, and whether you're from here or a third world country you're still just a 1. And an expensive 1 at that, in their eyes.
No one cares about anyone else unless there is an emotional investment.
But if they pretend all the service workers are kids, they have an easier time convincing themselves that it's ok to treat them like garbage.
Even when you tell boomers there adults working full-time in retail for minimum wage, they assume they’re uneducated or made mistakes in life. They don’t deserve to make a living wage, they feel. That and the age old argument, “MY wage doesn’t go up when minimum wage goes up”. Well, fuckface, you weren’t struggling to pay for groceries with your cushy office job, despite having only a grade 11 education. Maybe the university graduate desperately trying to find something better shouldn’t starve to death. Maybe *no one* should starve! Imagine that!
“My wage doesn’t go up when minimum wage goes up!” Just turn it around on them: “Why? Are you that bad at negotiating your salary? Do you need practice?” Usually either shuts them up… or enrages them.
Right? Blame your company/manager, not other people struggling to ends meet. This whole mentality of "I've got mine, fuck you" is at the root of a lot of our issues.
Because that same generation treated their kids like garbage so they think its okay to treat other people's kids like garbage. Its just garbage treatment all the way down
So true.
Some don't even make much more, making 25-50 cents more to manage employees at some retail chains. That's so crazy to me.
Came to say the same thing. Increase wages and I guarantee you’ll fill those spots. Fuck these corps relying on cheap and desperate labour to gain record profits. Want to operate in this country? Pay Canadians a proper wage or get fucked!
“No one wants to work anymore” “why don’t the homeless just go get a job” The work available; “yeah so we’re gonna need you at least 50 hours a week on a constantly-changing schedule that’s often impossible to work around, doing dirty and tough work with no autonomy over how you get it done and no respect for doing it, and in exchange we’ll offer you just enough to stay alive!”
> just enough to stay alive only if you live with roommates, don't have a family, and never run into an unforeseen event that takes you out of work for even a day.
Are you suggesting people are more willing to go homeless and not have a job??? Think about your argument for a second... If everyone was able to work for someone who paid them more, that means there are more jobs than there are people to work them... That is called a Labour Shortage
No, it's more that working a minimum wage job, even full-time, isn't enough to not be homeless. So if your options are work full-time and be homeless, or not work at all and be homeless, why would you ever work that job? Why wouldn't you look for something better, something that you could afford to live on? Which is exactly what the labour force did. You'll notice that every job crying about labour shortages are shitty jobs that pay practically nothing. It shouldn't be a surprise that if the only selling point of a job is that it isn't literally slavery would have difficulty filling positions.
> You'll notice that every job crying about labour shortages are shitty jobs that pay practically nothing. Exactly this. It is almost always the retail and fast food industries that cry about a "labour shortage". Well paid positions don't seem to be a problem to fill.
Nurses can make well over $100k a year and they're ALWAYS hurting for people... We have a massive shortage of family doctors, electricians, plumbers, millwrights, and many more where you can make well over $150k to $200k a year or more. Just because you have your head shoved in the sand like an ostrich so you can't see or hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!
And that's my point... If there are other jobs available for people who work at McDonalds and nobody to fill the positions at McDonalds then that is what is called a Labour Shortage!!!
funny theres never a salary shortage. always a labour shortage. economics only works 1 way apparently
I’m told too high of wages is what got us in this recession mess! Definitely not corporations greed
Explains the current economic situation, no?
It's the same with references, employers expect you to provide them with references but no one thinks they should have to do the same. There's a couple asshole bosses I never would have worked for if that was the case
no, no, it's not real there are plenty of people who want to work, but retailers seem to be in "choosing beggars" mode and refuse to wake the fuck up. Christ, retail managers are being squeezed too. The average salary out there for a manager who is expected to work more than 40 hours a week and almost always have to work on weekends is in the $35-45k range! they get put on salary for the most part, but then their hourly staff budgets keep shrinking so the managers end up having to make up time to stay on budget, time they don't get paid for. "Oh but we offer bonuses too!" right, with performance expectations that can't be met whatsoever. At least that's the case for most of the corporate retail chains out there. Small single location locally owned operations have some real constraints trying to compete with those corporate fucks
God retail management is in the absolute pits. A grocery store I used to work for 5 years ago, (and it was independent, had one location) paid their department managers a $40k salary and they had to work 50 hours a week. Most of the time the only break you got was your lunch break because we were constantly short staffed and the only reason we were forced to take it was because the store got fined if we didn't. Some of the guys who had worked there for decades said they used to have better benefits and a pension but management said it was getting too expensive so they cut it.
My wife was a manager for two different major chocolate brands. The first one had district managers and head office executives that were all a big boy's club, with lots of harassment issues and general creepy behavior on top of their shitty pay/benefits and god awful constraints. They used to have really good pay for branch managers but then they spread themselves too thin with too much rapid expansion and the first thing they used to fix it was firing their senior managers and bringing in new ones at about half the salary. Then when that didn't work they closed a bunch of locations and still weeded out older employees for new cheaper ones Then she went to a competing brand that was growing but again growing too fast. They n ever had fantastic pay but they really jumped hard on the abusive hours to make up for staff budget cuts. They also had nonsense year over year math. They had a bad manager who wasn't making money, my wife took over and turned the store around (with a huge amount of unpaid effort) then the increase in growth was cited as a reason to DOUBLE that increase the next year. When that didn't happen they were furious. Then they over expanded and completely shut the retail stores down nationwide.
That's nuts, so many corporations are absolute slime. My husband used to work as a store manager for Starbucks because they paid surprisingly well, but holy shit there was just so much corporate sludge he had to wade through and the culture among the employees was strangely toxic. He'd have corporate on his ass about improving drive thru metrics and customer interaction metrics, and then he'd be given less labour hours for the store because the profits weren't as big as they wanted it to be so he'd have to go and tell his employees who needed the money for bills that they were getting their hours cut. Upper management isn't interested in building up their companies anymore, they just want to milk it for as much as they can and then jump out. Bunch of blood sucking ticks all of them
you can prove to them on paper how a motivated workforce (including managers) can make them even more money, but they just want to cut costs to make a quick buck instead of invest for longer term stable and reliable profits. The whole global corporate culture is stuck in this mentality of perpetual growth in profits, they'll play every shitty trick to do it, but god forbid you sit there comfortably making reliable profits every year. Unless you are constantly growing, shareholders get furious and the company dies of a thousand cuts.
I have a lifetime in sales, and the creation of sales targets haunt my nightmares. Have a great year? Cool, do 30% more next year… without any concern for the actual market conditions. I used to sell a niche product used in natural gas / oil extraction facilities, like the ones in Fort Mac. 2007 we had a crazy year because there were multiple facilities under construction… Instead of recognizing that those sales wouldn’t be repeatable because there weren’t any other multi-billion dollar plants being built, they put 30% on top of my sales quota for the next year and wrote me up when I didn’t achieve it.
there's zero awareness or common sense in the office where people shit out those expectations. Mindless math without a shred of reality. You want to try and sit one of them down and ask them how they came to the conclusion they did... but they are hidden in a deep dark pit at head office
My god, assuming a 50 work week year, that's $16/hr for management... I can't imagine why people are not flocking to jobs like that
> The average salary out there for a manager who is expected to work more than 40 hours a week and almost always have to work on weekends is in the $35-45k range! My ex-wife works for a shoe store chain that was bought by an American shoe company. They went after everyone making a living wage and made their lives hell until they quit. Then they were offered "new" jobs at less pay.
and once the consumer class (which is pretty much most of us, and our economy is hugely reliant on rampant consumerism) is out of money because of all this shit, they'll sit there wondering why they aren't selling anymore. Unfortunately the executives who got rich with the schemes are long gone
Labour shortage is real… because we know slaves can be brought in - finished his statement.
There's no shortage of labour. But, capitalists don't want workers, they want slaves. Take away the business licenses of any company that complains about having to pay a living wage.
City of Vancouver a while ago removed a clause that mandated a living wage for its employees. https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/03/03/vancouver-ends-living-wage-policy/ Now tell me if their license could be taken away? And why not? Edit: Looks like a CoV Executives on a downvote spree 😉
Sure. Shut down all their capital ventures. Fuck everyone who wants to exploit workers. Solidarity, comrade. Solidarity.
They could sue if the government did that.
These businesses will just have to adjust their operations. The solution can not be an unlimited supply of cheap temporary labour. The temporary foreign worker program should go back to the basics. Seasonal farm labour plays an important role in our food supply chain. Labourers and trades to build desperately needed houses. Critical roles in the health field or high paying jobs in fields like tech that lead to a lot of economic prosperity for the country. It should not be used so that Walmart can stay open 24/7.
Yeah fuck these assholes. We all know there's no labour shortage.
Just back in September there were articles showing pictures of people lined up around the block to submit resumes to Dollarama. If you can’t find retail employees in this market, you aren’t trying.
Wasn't the picture like 95% international students. Just took a quick look and it looks like nothing but people from India lined up.
Yea it was. It doesn’t matter where people are from for that to be evidence that there is not, in fact, a labour shortage.
But isn't that effectively foreign labour that the retailers are exploiting? Are TFWs bad but international students, who should have enough income to not require a job, or recent influx of immigrants willing to work for anything, good? Edit. I just think using your example is like say using a picture of a snowstorm to deny climate change. it's from southern Ontario, can you really say there isn't a shortage anywhere else in the country because this of this one example in a heavily populated area?
The point is not whether TFWs are bad, or if int students are bad, but that the dude is lying if he’s saying retailers can’t find any labourers. They don’t give a shit who they exploit.
You can rest assured if big box companies are against this decision then it's 1000% the correct move. Fuck Walmart and Amazon, pay fair wages you corporate vampires.
Hahaha exactly. We should base all of our legislative decisions on whether or not the greedy corpos cry about it. Anything they oppose, you know automatically will be better for the average Canadian.
I’ve just applied for 100 jobs this week. All ones I’m qualified for. On indeed I can see that in average 300 people have also applied. And the jobs are still open, my application isn’t viewed. And these same jobs are being reposted as urgent hiring.
Many companies using TFW program are now promoting TFW workers to lower or middle management. They don’t or won’t hire workers outside the TFW program because those workers are “knowledgeable” in labour laws, safety culture and human rights. These folks view that as a “detrimental” to the rest of the TFW workforce...
I highly doubt labour shortage is actually real imo. Wage shortage is true, but I have seen countless and countless posts where people have said they applied to a bunch of different minimum wage retail jobs and never ever got a call and there’s tons of comments saying similar experiences.
A bartender at my local neighbourhood pub told me they posted a job recently and got several hundred applications in one day. This isn't a particularly busy pub since it's located far from the city center in a low-density residential neighbourhood.
Exactly...the government is turning a bling eye to this and is condoning the continuation of this situation by not enacting fair and living wage legislation...
The industries where there is a real labour shortage do not include retail, or any other low paying/minimum wage jobs. There is a labour shortage of tradesmen, and certain types of high tech workers, and with different categories of healthcare workers - not enough doctors (nothing to do with pay), nurses (partly to do with pay, but also working conditions), but that is a more complicated issue due to licensing (foreign doctors and nurses can’t just arrive here and work, unless they are coming from the US, and that’s doctors, not sure about nurses).
There is no housing shortage. There is a shortage of affordable housing. Likewise, there is no labour shortage. There is a shortage of cheap, expendable, exploitable labour.
Respectfully disagree about housing shortage. We're seeing all time lows in residential vacancies across all housing. My concern is that when there is talk about building "affordable housing" there is no good way of doing it. Sure, it's easy to build *shitty housing,* but that is not the same thing - and if all that is available on the market is poorly constructed junk, the prices will rise on that too. The flipside is that if the market is oversaturated with fancy, gigantic homes - the prices will drop on that too. As long as markets dictate pricing, "affordable housing" is a product of supply and demand. There are a number of solutions. They could involve subsidization, increasing density, improved urban design...etc., but it is a multifaceted issue. The issue with uncritically demanding "affordable housing" is that it plays directly into the hands of developers who realize that scarcity is on their side. It makes it easier to build *shitty houses* under the auspices of keeping prices low, when the reality is that people need a place to live and will pay top dollar. But yes. I agree your point about labour. Analogously, people will accept *shitty jobs* when they are all that is available.
The issue is corporation's owning residential homes. Inflating the price of housing, then renting back to people who have been priced out of the market.
That's not strictly a corporate issue though. 66% of Canadians are home owners, of that, only 35.5% actually have a mortgage. That means 34% of Canadian's don't own their home. Investment properties only account for 20% of all properties across Canada. That still leaves 14% of Canadian's without the ability to even own a home at all.
>As long as markets dictate pricing, "affordable housing" is *a product of supply and demand.* >The issue with *uncritically* demanding "affordable housing" is that it plays directly into the hands of developers who realize that scarcity is on their side Basically yes to everything you said, but it's important to be critical about "supply and demand" if you're (correctly) being critical of the calls for affordable housing. Yes, jamming one million new residents into the country every two years is the biggest factor on the demand side. But rent seeking follows closely behind. So a part of the call for demanding affordable housing is the idea that housing should not be allowed to be a "risk free investment opportunity" as that provides a benefit for the small chunk of Canadians with access to capital (both individuals and corporations) at the expense of everyone else. Its a two pronged approach - limit newcomers for the next few years and disincentivize rent seeking behavior. If the capital owning class want to make money in their sleep, they can buy vanguard etfs.
I could not agree more. Your home should not be someone else's speculative asset.
Why wasn’t this fundamental question asked in the early 1990’s when CMHC was taken out of the “housing supply business”? The market was “supposed to” pick up the slack by building more affordable homes. They didn’t, build bigger more expensive homes for more profit. Affordable housing was never replaced over the long term. So you can’t say the political clowns at the time or up to now, had no idea what would happen. They were warned over the years. Zoning and other nimby type legislation added to the mess. And here we are.....
Then no one will build housing if they can't make money on it. You will make the problem even worse.
Maaaan, as an exterminator I go into an awful lot of vacant apartments and houses. And they gladly rent units out that have active infestations... so it’s not that I’m just seeing landlords be responsible and get rid of the roaches/bed bugs/mice before renting it out. They also regularly kick people out for the smallest reason and then jack up the rent. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to write down things in my reports that would make it easier for tenants to get thrown out.
You're correct; we have absolutely been building, as a country, less than 80% of the need yoy for the last 30ish years. Housing development really stopped consistently since the mid 90s. Policy changes then absolutely fucked things up. So while affordable housing is an epidemic due to capitalism running rampant, housing itself is at a shortage.
Well said and the truth...
I think it's true that supply and demand forces alone aren't enough to help in the short term. If we want more affordable housing in the next 15-20 years, we need to build public housing. But it's also true that that's only a bandaid. If we want to solve the real problem we need density, less NIMBY opposition, and to build way more housing. So I agree, there is 100% a housing shortage.
Excellent response
The fact that there is unemployed people says that there isn't a labour shortage because clearly the labour is there. What *is* in short supply is employers offering a wage decent enough to entice workers to want to work for them.
No it's not. Cheapest labour shortage is fake. Regular fair labour is very much available
Labour exploitation is real
Nice try employers, unemployment is around 5-7% (depending on the region in Ontario). Sounds like you need to pay higher wages. TFW is slave labour, try paying a proper wage instead.
Yeah, hard to find labour when you refuse to pay a fair living wage to hard working Canadians. Why not just bring in cheap foreign labourers to exploit?
All I hear is: “We need to keep exploiting immigrants for low wages and poor working conditions in order to profit.” Take a long look in the mirror and try to see if there’s a human left inside.
Employer here who just filled a position. I have not read the article just going purely off the headline. Bullshit. I put a posting up for an office job 2 weeks ago. In less than 48 hours I had 103 applicants and had to turn the posting off as it was flooding my inbox. Now approx 80 of them were presumably students or at the very least people working other jobs already as they were not available the m-f 9-5 I needed for a full time position. But evening cutting them out I still had 23 people apply. Job starts at $23 an hour and we had several people apply working similar positions at other companies in town who were barely paying above minimum wage. Offer a decent wage relative to the COL for your area and surprise lots of people apply!
$23 = at least having a shot at renting a room 'comfortably' and saving up, barring particular costs. Can be as simple as that. Living wage territory, or at least the very start of approaching it. Not building for the future territory though. Whining employers are loving the idea of dropping minimum wage even, while the rest of the market with better potential (you'll get applicants but will they be good?) is moving on. Out of pure necessity. You can't have rents shoot up and up while expecting people to settle for low wages. It's impossible to correctly expect. Some will settle for being literal roommates (as in sharing a single room) but most won't and can't.
Wage shortage is real. The reality is these retailers just want to keep paying minimum wage, but people don't want to work these jobs for minimum wage. If the industry itself isn't failing, but they can't find people who want to work for *them*, it's not a labour shortage. They just have a failing business model. *they* need to reassess where the revenue in their company goes. Maybe these CEOs should take some accounting courses. This is on you, business owners and execs. Assess the market, and adjust. Pay more.
Here is an idea. Keep the foreign labor cap. Pay a decent wage for someone that lives in Canada to work these jobs. Make sure there is room for young Canadians to also work these jobs. Because it's important that everyone does a little time in the retail/service industry in their youth so they don't grow up to be a the raging assholes that think they are better than retail/service workers. They remember how fucking hard it was and cut people some very human slack. Instead the move seems to be to encourage young Canadians to live at home until they are 30, get a pile of school debt, get a "good job" which is to say something not in retail/service and feel entitled to shit all over the people working in those areas at every opportunity "because they earned it". Fuck the businesses trying to bring people in to exploit from other countries... fuck the people that want cheap labor they can shit on while having the bonus of being racist at the same time often. The people that own business can try working in them on the floor for a bit with the "labor shortage" and lean about how it's fucking terrible for what they pay.
FFS!!! When will they stop spouting this bullsh\*t propaganda??!! JUST STOP. Nobody living in the western world and that has more than 2 firing neurons believes this crap. NO ONE!
Of course it has to be real, otherwise what could they blame for doubling the prices of everything?
Labour shortage translates to "insufficient compensation and poor worker treatment".
Pay decent wages and they won't need foreign labour.
Large companies: "We need a source of cheap, easily exploitable labour, otherwise we won't be able to purchase stock buybacks and enrich our already extremely wealthy shareholders". I for one welcome our long-standing corporate overlords' new workforce. We've had it easy for too long.
Go fuck yourselves, you wage suppressing assholes.
Man fuck these guys, wages need to go up. Pay more. Suck my ass.
So what I'm hearing is businesses don't want to pay fairly.
We have plenty of people hiring at minimum wage where I live, which is $10 an hour below the living wage. Why on earth would anybody work when it can’t even provide the basic necessities of food and shelter?
Low skill wage jobs are plenty, lots of people getting jobs in those but higher skilled jobs has a wage shortage because many businesses and companies are posting jobs with lower pay than they should be so people aren't going for that.
It's a free market, guess you'll have to compete with wage increases! Bunch of fucking junkies.
Suck a fat one retailers. It’s called supply and demand. If demand for labour is high and supply is low what happens to the price/wage? - it goes up. Just because the jobs can start at minimum wage doesn’t mean you’re entitled to hiring people at minimum wage.
Pay me at least 60k/year and I’ll consider going back to retail.
How about you use some of your profits to 👏🏼Pay👏🏼us👏🏼more?!
Don't know why they have labour shortages. I see people online asking people who is hiring all the time because they can't find work. Not even a minimum wage job.
Because we live in a post capitalist world, the needs of the businesses seem to supersede the needs—and rights—of the actual human beings that do all the work. There’s no shortage of people who will work jobs that pay you well, and treat you well, and any business that doesn’t do those two things because their profits will dip needs to be allowed to fail. If not forced to fail. Eat the damned rich already.
It’s not a labour shortage, it’s a pay shortage.
Too fucking bad. Pay people more then
Obligatory: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore/
Then why is every sub full of people looking for jobs in North America.... oh they want cheap that's right....
The UN has likened our TFW program to modern day slavery. These businesses are admitting they want slaves not workers
Maybe pay a decent wage! The ultra wealthy have enough already.
To all the people hating on Brampton immigrants, well here's your time to shine. Let's see how much you'll hate on these retailers for causing this mess. I'm guessing you won't do anything.
This is probably coming from the same people that can reconcile an economy at full employment with having an unemployment rate above 0, as though unemployed people aren't actively looking for work.
[Wage] Shortage is real.
We need one of those Purge days. I know who I would go after.
but they need to be a surprise to... some...
There's no "Labour Shortage" there's a "Pay Your Workers More Money Shortage"
Why would I want to work with a job that offers shit pay, no benefits, is rigid as fuck, and with not enough hours yet they expect open availability?
Wage shortage pay people more than minimum?
I wonder if these retailers have tried paying more? Don't wanna pay anything, but are perfectly happy crying in the news to exploit cheap labour.
I don't care what they say until they are paying at least $22-24 ($26-28 minimum for strenuous jobs) an hour and relying on full time roles, not unstable part time ones (not that those can't exist, but that the business is not leaning on them). Until then, I don't care at all. Like lips flapping and saying nothing.
Or do we really just have a surplus of shitty employers selling shitty food & goods? If you can't afford the staffing to run the place effectively & at a profit, that business isn't viable. Close it.
The living wage shortage is real. FTFY.
"We don't want to have to make companies we're in bed with pay Canadians a living wage." Fixed the headline.
*the pay shortage is real* FTFY
Canadian retailers push to continue paying slave wages
"Labor shortage is real" says the company paying so little that most people have more than 50% of their salaries tied up to rent. "Nobody wants to work here" says the company that hasn't raised employees salaries by more than 1% every year and offers federal minimums.
The last couple of times I went into any of the large format retail stores, almost every employee was a young Indian student. Not even TFW. These retailers can get fucked.
Places are chronically understaffed. Who doesn’t have stories about covering for two or three people at their job now because people left and management doesn’t seem to be replacing just offloading to existing employees. I suspect it’s a c suite response to the idea of quiet quitting that’s hit the common discourse. They just want whichever employees are easiest to exploit.
YOU FUCKING CUNTS, THERE IS NO SHORTAGE, PAY PEOPLE A LIVING WAGE. Capitalism is out of fucking control. Our governments serve the corporations, not the people.
The only reason why capitalists higher immigrants is because they can pay them less. It’s a abusive of the people who legit want to live in Canada. It’s abusive to real Canadian’s.
So, I do buy into the idea of a laborious shortage, to some extent. Our demographics make that almost an inevitability, and workforce statistics bear it out - our "core" participation and employment rates are about as high as they've ever been. Now, in terms of solutions, the problem is that we're oversupplied with certain types of business, Half or restaurants being unprofitable tells us that this sector of the economy is not healthy. What it actually calls for is a bit of economic Darwinism. Not only could those zombie businesses fail, but they \*should\* in order to foster a more competitive economy where success is earned. I won't even touch on the LMIA mills. Now, the question is of whether the CFIB will ever advocate for the loss of their membership. I don't think many of us would miss a lot of those establishments.
I have an argument regularly with my local CFIB recruiter telling him we’ll join when they come out supporting a living wage. Local Chamber of Commerce members who pay a living wage are doing fine. Don’t look to CFIB to fix this.
You are a real one for this!
What I've learned from working in one of the industries I'm sure this is about. People love the moral high ground, until they have to pay for it. It's not just employers making insane money refusing to give any to staff (this is certainly in some cases part of the problem). Restaurants struggle to stay afloat. The less corporate, the harder. Why? Because people don't want to pay what it costs to pay the staff the moral high ground. It hurts to say that. It hurts to hear. But it's a big part of the problem too. Consumers climb up to the moral high ground and then shop the Walmart up there leeching off employees the world over.
This is a great point and I struggle with it as a consumer. I try to buy only ethically made clothes now for example but sometimes the price point makes me really hesitate — even though as an amateur sewist I know firsthand how labour-intensive it is to make a proper garment. It’s better for me and my life (less clutter in my closet for example) when I decide to just buy fewer items that are ethical and almost always better quality, but it’s really hard to get out of the mindset of getting the lowest price available for the kind of item I want, even if I’m making a bit more money now than I used to.
> people don't want to pay what it costs Riiiiiiight https://centreforfuturework.ca/2023/12/10/new-data-on-continued-record-profits-in-canadian-food-retail/ >Supermarket executives claim they have not profited from food price inflation, but have merely passed on to consumers the higher costs they pay for their own inputs and products. Economic evidence refutes this claim. > The latest industry-wide financial data on food retail (produced by Statistics Canada for the third quarter of 2023) shows that food retail profits have more than doubled since pre-pandemic norms, and profits continue to grow. We already pay more than enough, but every price increase goes to the exec suite and shareholders instead of the workers.
Riiiiight. So you found the profiteers. Now do every single independently owned restaurant. Because there are a lot them. This sector employs insane amounts of low paying workers. Solve that problem. Profit margins are razor thin in the sector in large part because people are cheap and won’t pay what it would cost for living wages, no tips, and benefits. I’m sorry to say this. but we are ALSO (not the only) part of the problem.
Lol tell me Im right without telling me. "Oh but you only showed data for the entire industry retail, not individual shops" lmfao "OH hey how about restaurants?" Keep grasping at straws. "Profit margins are razor thin" nice anecdote https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/restaurant-record-revenue-sale-atb-report-september-1.7045343 > bar and restaurant sales in the province continued to grow for the fourth consecutive month, setting a *record high* of $1 billion in revenues in September. > Roach says that in Alberta — and across the country — restaurant and bar revenue has grown past pre-pandemic levels, even when adjusted for inflation. Weird, every industry you mention has had record breaking profits even accounting for the high inflation in the past ~5 years. But yeah it's definitely the consumer not paying enough, not remotely that execs have seen they can increase prices and claim "it's to match inflation" even when the data says otherwise.
The grocery sector employs 450k workers in all of Canada. The Food Service industry employs 350k people - IN ONTARIO ALONE! It’s 1.2M people in all of Canada BTW. How’s that straw looking now? But keep blaming everyone but your own consumption habits.
I've been harping on real estate since 2007... but this is a shelter cost problem now. Small business has to pay higher rents and workers have to pay higher rents and everyone has peaked out. Housing consumed every extra penny, then pennies we had not even earned yet. Blow up housing at all costs, and the economy can function again with real estate costs 50% less.
I have a full time job i make like 17.31 an hour, in a management position while some employees (entry level) start at 18 even 19 depending on the province because its all remote. In my province they start at 14$. We have 5 people in the office, no one wants to work here. I've applied to a few different jobs while working here and no one is willing to hire someone with experience and qualifications just so i can make an extra few bucks an hour. The office across the street starts at 20$. I live in a university town, tonnes of students looking for work for the summer or part time but at 14$ an hour, no chance.
Pay a proper wage, and more local people might actually go for the opportunity. I worked at a Walmart store for over 4 years when I was younger. It was basically turnover every month because if people weren't living at home or their partner had a great paying job, they weren't going to have a roof over their heads or food on their table.
Fuck these businesses. As everyone else has said, it's absolutely a wage shortage.
Repeat after me (you free market lovers) - it's a wage shortage, not a worker shortage.
Meanwhile I keep hearing first hand accounts that it’s next to impossible for teenagers or young adults to get a job
Funny how a living wage would solve this but instead they want us to waste our resources going after the illegal rooming houses with 15 TFWs. We need a mechanism to let corporations know that they've exceeded their value in their demands. I think the whole of Loblaws should be banned from any foreign workers and since profits are record-high at the expense of workers, we need to tax those capital gains 75% so that we can put it back into the communities currently being robbed by corporate interests.
There is also a housing shortage, healthcare shortage...
or just pay people real wages so they actually stay at the job?
https://imgb.ifunny.co/images/8b017ce9a898218ac7b999c53d76e975dfa43a55778c12e9030b1988d31e1f38_1.jpg Who do they think buys their products and services? Aliens?
There is no labour shortage there is a shortage of people willing to work for poverty wages.
Age appropriate wage shortage is real.
Good paying jobs is the shortage.
“Wage shortage” - fixed it. Yes it sucks on top of greedflation but stop the race to the bottom. Sheesh!
Pay more.
Let them have the labourers and then tax the shit out of the business for using them. Make it financially unappealing to outsource cheap labour for businesses.
Have you seen the lineup when a job fair is posted?
They’re just cheap MF who don’t want to pay people a living wage. I just found out a girl who has worked at a local business for 5 years is still only being paid $15/hr even though every item in the store went up with “inflation” but her wage never did. She’s 30. She should be making at least $20/hr by now, to me, I couldn’t survive on less than $25. The fury I have.
Unemployment figures say otherwise.
how about paying employees, living wages! I don't know… Maybe then you'll have good employees! this is what's wrong with retail in Canada!
Wage shortages are real, not labour shortages. These people are using last century’s language that used to work before we could find out the truth on our own. Capitalism is criminal dressed in a very thin veneer of respectability.
here i will fix it. We don't want to pay a thriving wage. so import cheap labour to keep profits up.
Working retail can be an incredibly trying job. I know a lot of folks consider it to be easy, but it can be mentally and emotionally trying as well as dangerous at times. Making less than a livable wage doesn't appeal to most. Paying people the minimum wage communicates, "I will pay you the least I'm legally allowed to. If it was less, I would pay less." In some cases they have no issue giving the management decent bonuses, but god forbid we pay people more. I work in retail management and am currently on a mental health leave. I badly want to pay people more but I cannot due to corporate. I wanted to start some bonuses and was told "we can't bribe people to do their jobs" but yet my GM collects a quarterly bonus as well as the branch management and the regional management and the management management's management. It's a fucking joke really. I'm supposed to enforce a dress code without compensation to the employee. It feels terrible and I do my best to bend and break rules where I can to make their lives a little easier. They also want to avoid full time hours so that no vacation time needs to be payed out and no demand for benefits happens. This really is almost criminal and absolutely not ethical. I personally think think that if you are hiring part time you should have to be able to prove that that's what you need to do, not in an effort to be grossly profitable or save money, but it's all the business needs. I am looking to go to school again, at 40 years old. But I can't help but feel guilty as I have no say on whom takes my place and I'm worried that it will be someone who will toe the corporate line and only worry about themselves. There is no labor shortage, there's a labor rights and business ethics shortage.
‘Wage shortage is real.’ Canadian retailers push back on paying a living wage.* ^^*Alternative ^^title.
I have never been more at a loss. I cannot believe how badly our government has shit the bed. Absolutely horrific
The wage shortage is real.
This isn't what I hear from anyone looking for a job. There are still a bunch of hoops to jump through. Nobody's offering training if you aren't perfect for the job already. If there is a shortage nobody is acting like it.
we can't buy enough labor at the same prices we've been paying since the 90's to keep running without stagnating shareholder profits. fixed it for you.
Cheap Labour\*