Make a business plan that is moral

Re: “Minimum-wage backlash growing among Tims faithful,” Jan. 10.

I am disappointed by companies that produce products in far-off countries employing people, including children, for a pittance.

I am more than disappointed when, in this country, a business plan is developed that is based on paying wages that keep employees in the netherland of poverty. That, I respectfully submit, is not a moral business plan.

I listen to the hue and cry coming out of Ontario that a business employing 40 people will have to come up with more than an extra quarter of a million dollars a year to pay a minimum living wage and think to myself: “That is backward.” To date, the business has been pocketing (for whatever purposes) that money on, to use a cliché, the backs of those 40 employees.

A business plan should start with a living wage for employees before adding all the other costs. If, at the bottom, it is not sustainable, then it is not. If adding up all the other costs and then fiddling with employee costs so the model works is required to open the business, fine. Tell the employees that is all you can afford to pay (if it is true), but don’t whine when the government or a union forces you to face what you should have faced from the start.

Pride and rationalization based on creating jobs needs to be tempered when those jobs are perpetuating poverty.

W. Paul Hansen Oak Bay