EclectEcon

Snowsqualls in mid-western Ontario, so I get to work at home today. Here's an interesting piece in Salon, referenced by Craig Newmark (still the first blog I check each weekday), quoting a letter to Salon from a 19-year socionomology student:

Minimum wage went up this year, so if anything I should be happy. However, starting this week, the owner of the restaurant started cutting back our hours. The business isn't failing or anything, yet he just decided to cut back our hours. While I used to get around 23 hours a week, I now have 14. My co-workers are suffering the same fate, each of them losing five or more hours.

I don't believe those numbers. Who is doing the work? The manager? If not, where is the evidence of the capital-labour substitution? Or maybe even though the business "isn't failing or anything", demand is dropping?

Also, be sure to check out the snooty, elitist advice to this worker from Salon. My own advice to the student would be to keep looking for other work but at the same time ask himself more seriously why his own hours are being cut.

It's probably better to take a broader view of the effects of minimum wage legislation, as I do here.