The budget bill just signed into law by the president will both make it harder for restaurants to take worker tips while reducing a form of inequality rife in the industry.
The national minimum wage in Fiji is just $2.32 Fijian dollars per hour, or F$111.36 for a 48-hour week.
Darren Whiteside/Reuters
Experience in Fiji shows that reducing working poverty requires not only a raise in the minimum wage, but a minimum set of government services and benefits.
Although over 200 CEOs have promised to share windfalls from the recent tax cut with their employers – something the president is likely to bring up in the State of the Union – research suggests workers aren’t holding their breath.
President of Ontario Federation of Labour Chris Buckley addresses protesters outside a Tim Hortons Franchise in Toronto last week.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Do businesses have to act like businesses? Or could we pay slightly more for goods, like coffee, and recognize that stability for working people is essential to a robust economy.
Chris Stevens, owner of Kaboom Chicken restaurant in Toronto, hands an order to a customer in December. Ontario’s new $14 per hour minimum wage took effect Jan. 1 and Stevens has already taken steps to ensure his restaurant can afford the added expense.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov
Minimum wages increases in jurisdictions across North America could have a big impact on the restaurant industry. Here’s how restaurants are trying to adapt.
Donald Trump says cheap Mexican labor is hurting American workers. But isn’t it also hurting Mexican workers?
AP Photo/Guillermo Arias
Trump has attacked NAFTA, saying that cheap, under-regulated Mexican labor hurts American workers. If he’s right, then NAFTA negotiations could be a chance to push Mexico on workers’ rights.
Wages are low among hospitality workers, who are disproportionately female.
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Women in minimum wage jobs earn 10% less than their male peers. Wages are systematically lower in jobs more commonly held by women.
An Amazon worker loads a bag of groceries into a customer’s car trunk at an AmazonFresh Pickup location in Seattle in March 2017. Amazon hopes to offer the service to its Prime customers soon and promises crews will deliver items to cars in as little as 15 minutes after orders are placed. Loblaw is preparing for Amazon to introduce similar services in Canada.
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Loblaw is playing defence against Amazon, the boogeyman of retailing. But if Canadian grocers went on the offensive, they’d be able to deliver much more than food to Canadian homes.
The ACTU has launched a campaign to create a living wage.
AAP
The minimum wage is rising in many parts of Canada, but it masks the impact of seismic changes to the agriculture, food and retail industries brought about by new technologies.
Young people don’t have a right to equal pay.
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