Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
I wish people would read what they write. We are talking about 'statutory holidays'. It is a sad commentary about society that pace of life has to keep accelerating and that is exactly what we talking about. Why should any business be closed any time? And why should there be paid overtime if it is all part of normal business? Really, that is where we are heading. I highly doubt that non-unionized workers will get paid a higher rate just because it is a holiday.
Since when are corporations more important than the people? Holidays are designed to benefit people. Opening stores on statutory holidays mainly benefits corporations. This is all about greed and the rich shareholders.
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Evidence how long it's been since you've ever been in the position of someone working shitty service industry jobs earning minimum wage. By law, anyone, regardless if unionized or not, gets time-and-a-half if they work holidays. In high school, I worked for a non-unionized coffee shop and we always got time-and-a-half, as required.
Interestingly, you're hatred for corporations has led even you to ignore the human side of working on holidays: we choose to work
gladly because we get paid more than we would otherwise any other day of the week. I could have worked Friday and Monday and got paid my time-half and then had the Tuesday off to enjoy and have a bit of extra money to pay my bills. The reason why people are so glad to work holidays for that extra cash is because
it is impossible to live off of minimum wage. It would be surprising if someone earning minimum wage has a mortgage considering how much housing prices are jacked-up and unaffordable (is that the fault of big corporations?) or how groceries are increasingly become more expensive (blame corporations, but food prices are determined by more than CEOs arbitrarily increasing them to further line their pockets). Did you know OC Transpo fares are increasing? That's the city choosing to screw over low-income people who can already barely afford to ferry back-and-forth between their jobs and their homes.
But here's a suggestion: let's increase minimum wage to something like $20-an-hour so people can afford to live. How about that? That standard would have to be implemented by the government, which is reluctant to even increase it to $14.
"
Hey, you're low-income and need more money in order to afford you bills. So we're going to do a favour for you: force you to not work certain days. You can't afford it, you don't need it as much as you need extra money, and this is more a reflection of my privilege of never having to be in your financial situation. But you have no choice in the matter because I think your employer - a corporation - is evil and greedy, so in order to punish them we're going to make it so you can't work, regardless
of the fact that we're actually punishing you as well by making it so you don't get to earn more money than you would otherwise on certain, special days.
Oh, increasing your wage? Nah, we're not as concerned with that as getting a corporation to not operate on these arbitrary days we've decided everyone shouldn't work. We're less concerned with how much you earn and more about punishing the Big Guys."
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