The Impact of the Minimum Wage Increase on Strata Corporations

While we’re not usually keen political commentators, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by our firm that the government elected in 2017 has made several promises which will have a significant impact on Strata Corporations.  One of those, and the focus of this article, will be the promise to increase the Minimum Wage to $15/hour by 2021.  In September of 2017, the rate for Minimum Wage saw it’s first increase to $11.35 (from $10.85).

Many of the service providers utilized by Strata Corporations will necessarily have to raise their rates to compensate for higher wages.  These include:

• Concierge services;
• Janitorial firms;
• Window Cleaners;
• Dryer Duct Cleaners;
• Painters, and many more.

These sorts of services generally employ workers making wages closer to the bottom of the wage scale and will feel a more or less immediate impact on the increased minimum wage.  The respective companies will certainly pass those increased operating costs on to the consumers (Strata Corporations).

Over time, it is reasonable to expect that workers making higher wages will also see their rates increase due to upward pressure on labour pricing as a result of raising the bottom end.  While we don’t pretend to have any significant expertise on economics, it’s certainly going to impact Strata Corporation budgets.

For now, we recommend allocating increases to the basic services that will see immediate increases in their wages (such as those listed above).  In the medium-to-long term, Strata Corporations will need to budget adequately for an inflating wage market, assuming the increases continue to be put forward.