It's certain that the way the heirs to the Tim Horton's fortune handled Ontario's minimum wage hike will become a classic case study. Linda McQuaig writes:
Apparently thinking nobody would find out, the daughter of hockey player Tim Horton and the son of his business partner Ron Joyce, who are married to each other in a plot twist worthy of the Game of Thrones, sent a note to their grossly underpaid employees from their winter home in Florida informing them that their benefits — including 40 minutes a day of paid breaks — were being clawed back to compensate for the new $14-an-hour minimum wage.
Jeri-Lynn Horton-Joyce and Ron Joyce Jr. — whose father has a net worth of $1.4 billion — expressed “great regret” for the clawbacks, apparently convinced there was no other option. The market made me do it!
For decades, we have been told that the market is a force of nature which operates by its own rules. That's a lie:
Business advocates protest minimum wages for interfering with the “free market.” They make it sound like the market is some sort of natural system that operates according to basic, natural laws — like the laws of gravity — and that we tamper with it at our peril.
In fact, the market is nothing more than a set of human-made laws — governing property, contracts, labour, taxes, etc.
Rather than being based on natural principles, the laws of the marketplace simply reflect the power structure of society. Those with power are able to bend the laws in their own favour.
The evidence is unavoidable in places like Seattle and Alberta:
Indeed, despite fear-mongering about job losses when Alberta began hiking its minimum wage in 2015, jobs in its low-wage service sector actually grew by 12,400 last year, along with the rest of its economy.
The Hortons and Joyces revealed the lie that is at the heart of neo-liberalism. It's not about the market. It's all about power and how it's distributed.
Image: Oxfam Blogs
