Unionized Quebec Tim Hortons workers unhappy with the deal that cuts paid breaks – August 11, 2018

It’s interesting when I read articles about vacant jobs in Canada and then I read about Unionized Tim Hortons workers, oddly enough Quebec is tops in the Nation with job vacancies. Well, you can click the link below to read the CBC article in full for yourself.

 

Unionized Quebec Tim Hortons workers unhappy with deal that cuts paid breaks

 

I want to first say that I personally believe that unions have a right to exist in the PRIVATE SECTOR. I’m 100% against unions in the public sector, however, as far as the private sector is concerned I do believe in the people having a right to form a union. The reason I don’t believe in Unions in the public sector is the same reason why I’m not a fan of the public education school system in Ontario. The teachers of public schools and their boards once a union is formed put the rights and entitlements of teachers ahead of the futures of the children they’re teaching.

It’s a unions job to get the people it represents the best deals possible if the entity paying the workers doesn’t give in to these demands the Union and the people it represents often become disgruntled and political. When public unions representing public workers get political typically there will be a politician that will yield to their demands which often involve higher pay and increased entitlements.

In the public sphere as far as public education goes this has led to extremely costs to manage public schools which inevitably on a municipal level leads to fewer teachers being hired, market demands not being met and increased expectations of taxpayers to pay more for less. In the affluent areas of cities all across Ontario, the schools a little better managed because obviously there’s more money, however in the not so affluent areas even the trades have been shut down. what the obviously leads to an increase in job vacancy rates while job seekers focus on the corporate entities they know and trust.

If you’ve noticed most of the big brands don’t have as hard a time finding talent. It’s the smaller businesses that have a hard time attracting workers. The reason for this is simply the big corporate brands have more money. But here’s the thing about Tim Hortons, it’s a franchise. A lot of the Franchise owners are in debt, of course, they’ll never admit it because in order to become a franchise owner there are requirements that have to be met. But similar to the real estate market there are ways around the rules.

Business people typically anticipate future sales, they have to think about 5 – 10 years into the future and this is where things get tricky when let’s say a union appears or the government raises the cost of labor by raising minimum wages. This ultimately leads to the franchise owners making changes, which is even harder to do when you’re a franchise. This is why I never got into franchising if you own your own small business you could care less what the government does with minimum wages because you can adjust your pricing. But when you’re stuck in a franchise, what you as a franchise owner is actually doing is you’re paying for the right to use the Tim Hortons brand.

So if let’s say Restaurant Brands International (RBI) doesn’t want to raise prices because their profits are secure, that inaction puts the franchise owners in a tough bind. As they have no way to remedy their dwindling profits, plus most franchises are pretty uniform meaning it requires a certain number of employees to operate which equates to a permanent cut in their profits. What does really mean you ask? Well if the franchise owner is in debt and lets ‘s say interest rates are rising? This puts the owner in more debt. Or let’s say the Franchise owner was trying to make future investments based on anticipated capital, this option is now closed. Plus typically when Franchise owners sign up to own Tim Hortons they do so with the belief of expectation of future return.

The private sector is profit driven and unions understand this and try to get the best profit for their members, but to me, with all the regulations and options available to Canadian workers I personally think unions need to be fazed out. Unions in the modern era to me are obsolete, look what happened to GM workers in Oshawa Ontario a few years back, all those Union dues and the workers got little to noting, growing demand actually allows hardworking people to demand more wages.

That’s how this works people and in my opinion, it’s our obsolete education system that’s the root cause of people undervaluing themselves. If I were a hard-working Tim Hortons worker I simply wouldn’t work for any money less than what I knew my labor was worth. Good work is hard to find, I worked in the sheet metal industry and I worked my behind off, do you what happened to me? I actually got punished by the workers union, once word spread that my pay was equal to that of workers that had been there 5 years prior my pay increases stopped.

During the meeting, my boss laughed and the Unions used me as an example of corruption in the steel plant in which I worked for. I guess I shouldn’t have worked those overtime hours and learned how to operate every machine in the warehouse, which was something other workers weren’t willing to do. My point here is that all humans are different and the hardworking are being punished for the complacent which in the not so distant future may lead to some economic chaos that most people simply won’t understand.

Interesting times ahead.