Goodwill Closing
- Thread starter SkyRider
- Start date
Quite a few universities now have these co-op programs. Plus, there are other programs where you can work during the day and take night courses.
Ah sounds good. Goes to show my old school post-secondary education knowledge. With flexible programs, it should make it easier to make a buck while going to school.
At the end of the day, all this debate lately about living wages and such are moot.
Goodwill is closing. No different then the hundreds or thousands of businesses across the country that fail every year.
All comes down to business which is very easy to understand...... Make money = Survive
Making money is easy to conceptualize, but only successful business people can execute it, which can basically be summed up as:
- Good sales.... products people want to buy at prices people willing to spend... Goodwill gets a gimmie here with $4M federal funding
- Keep costs in line.... that goes for labour, building and product costs.... Goodwill gets another gimmie as product costs are $0
Have good sales with reasonable costs = profitable = survive another year
Goodwill failed. So at some point, there will be some kind of detailed analysis on why it failed. Just a matter of when those articles come out. Will be interesting to read.
Goodwill is closing. No different then the hundreds or thousands of businesses across the country that fail every year.
All comes down to business which is very easy to understand...... Make money = Survive
Making money is easy to conceptualize, but only successful business people can execute it, which can basically be summed up as:
- Good sales.... products people want to buy at prices people willing to spend... Goodwill gets a gimmie here with $4M federal funding
- Keep costs in line.... that goes for labour, building and product costs.... Goodwill gets another gimmie as product costs are $0
Have good sales with reasonable costs = profitable = survive another year
Goodwill failed. So at some point, there will be some kind of detailed analysis on why it failed. Just a matter of when those articles come out. Will be interesting to read.
One of my former neighbors is an immigrant from Colombia. Could barely speak Anglais. Worked as a car mechanic. His wife worked as a cleaning lady. Put 2 daughters (one a lawyer) through university. One day I found out he had moved (bought his own house). These are the immigrants we need.
And society is leading a good life
No offence but you seem to be looking at this in the wrong way and "blaming" companies. Companies are doing exactly what the free market entitles them to do....make money
Instead of "blaming" or "pointing" your finger at a company you can also look at it from the employees view point. I worked retail a long time and I came across a lot of different people. Sure like any industry there were the "piss moaners and complainers" however many of the employees I came across were the following:
Students- they were happy to have the job for the income and to gain experience and were not upset about the wage rate because they either lived at home or knew they were not able to gain employment in a "high paying job" until they graduated.
Immigrants- they were happy because they had a job and were happy to be in the country starting a new life that would lead to a "higher paying job"
Second Income Workers- wives or semi retired etc that had other sources of income coming in- they were happy because they had other sources of income and were there to feel "needed" or "contribute" or "keep busy" etc
"Less Educated"/ "Criminal records" etc- people that for some reason were not "employable" in "high" paying jobs- they were happy because someone hired them. They knew with their past things could be worse or "unemployed" and many were there to "start again" which the retail job helped them do (build up references, gain experience, chance to go back to school etc)
So overall the employees were happy also. Sure there are complainers but the majority of employees fully understood exactly why they were working where they were.
Retail fills a void in the employment market that no other industry would fill. Without retail there would be a large segment of the population that would be "unemployable". And there are always individuals that are happy to work retail for because of whatever situation they are in.
In other words it is the free market......retail companies and employees when left to their own choices will always come to a equal balance.
Only people I ever heard whine about the wage rate in retail all the time were unionized employees that felt entitled to do as little as possible for as much as possible or politicians that don't know fuck all about economics but rather panhandle to every interest group to look good. But this opens an completely new debate
Overall the individual will always know what is best for themselves....they will work retail for whatever reason their life situation is and if they don't like it they leave.
I do, and by the way, tuition is $35,000 per year for law school in Toronto.
Of course companies will maximise the profit for their shareholders, management can go to jail for neglecting their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. That is why Government needs to
set limits on salaries, provide equal opportunities for education for all etc. etc.
There is hardly any doubt that most Canadians agree with you two gentlemen in letting the free market regulate wages, in having only rudimentary welfare, and having strong barriers to social mobility,
especially through the cost of education.
I am personally convinced that Canada could do much better, relative to other countries, if it was serious about developing its human capital to the max. However, I am happy to let Canadians keep the status quo.
My children is getting the best education money can buy, and they will do just fine.
November 2015
Postmedia execs pocketed $1M in bonuses as company slashed jobs
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/postmedia-executive-bonuses-paul-godfrey-1.3339702
January 2016
Postmedia cuts 90 jobs, merges newsrooms in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/postmedia-job-cuts-1.3410497
Postmedia posts $4.2-million (quarterly) loss; aims to cut $50-million by end of May
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...ion-by-end-of-may/article28141427/?cmpid=rss1
Postmedia execs pocketed $1M in bonuses as company slashed jobs
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/postmedia-executive-bonuses-paul-godfrey-1.3339702
January 2016
Postmedia cuts 90 jobs, merges newsrooms in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/postmedia-job-cuts-1.3410497
Postmedia posts $4.2-million (quarterly) loss; aims to cut $50-million by end of May
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...ion-by-end-of-may/article28141427/?cmpid=rss1
So what? I want to live in Rosedale, but all the homes are $3 million. Equal opportunity would mean all homes should sell for the same price.
Don't blame companies. If anything blame the government. They already fund them $4M and Goodwill still closed up shop. If its such an essential retailer, the government can surely fund them more money to keep it afloat. But they didn't bother. Goes to show the government even has limits and doesn't care.
It's actually not even a free market. It's free to an extent. The government has policies on minimum wages, vacation time, severance pay etc.... If you want low income earners to earn more cash, why blame companies and force them to pay higher "living wages". Protest the government to double the minimum wage to $20/hr to get to a better wage and all companies will have to follow. You're blaming the wrong people.
The amount of social service/healthcare in Canada is huge compared to most countries in the world. So what we get is a good safety net. I'm not saying it's the best, but still good. Someone making a good living won't even need to touch their pension, but it's mandated by the government to help out bad spenders who they know will blow all their money by the time they are old, and to level it out a bit when everyone is old. That's why there is a minimum payout even if you didn't work or paid into it hardly anything. They forced upon people to pay a portion of their income to something they won't get back until their 60s. Many people don't even live to that age so in essence they contributed for nothing.
There you go. So don't complain.
Therefore, you should support massive tax cuts, take a butcher's knife to the government and cut all those silly programs, give the working person a chance.
By massive tax cuts, the working person actually has a chance to accumulate savings, which they can use as capital to invest.
Or they can use their savings from work for ... gasp ... an education!
However, today that is not possible because the tax rates are too high, and for ideological reasons, the federal, the provincial, the municipal governments spend money they don't have, meaning taxes will not be coming down.
If you are middle class or poor, you will find it exceedingly difficult to form savings and capital from working an average paying job.
This is capitalism. You need capital. Capital is precisely what the Liberals center-left don't want you to have.
Sorry to say, but Canada is not the Canada I knew when I was younger. Everyone person or family for themselves, today and going forward. I can't do anything about it.
Exactly.
If someone doesn't like that retail job paying $12/hr or being a waiter at Denny's for $10/hr + tips, then leave. No company or government is forcing someone to work there.
Every city has jobs. The bigger the city, the bigger the pool of jobs. If someone thinks they are worth more, then skip pouring coffee at Denny's, brush up the resume, and apply for an office job for $80,000 where you will go up against experienced business people. Or apply for a blue collar job in a factory where guys are making $25/hr with potential for OT. The jobs are out there. If someone can't hack it and can only get a retail job for low wages, then too bad. It's not like those jobs will go unfulfilled forever. Someone will get it, which pays double-triple what a retail job pays, so it shows companies WILL pay good money. If companies were that greedy, all companies would offer every job at $11/hr. Whether a shoe salesman or a VP of Marketing, a company should theorectically make more $$$ of they can get away with paying everyone min wage. But they don't.
They will pay low wages to unskilled jobs which can be done by highschoolers. But for jobs requiring experience and dedicated skills..... (let's say a chemist working in an R&D lab), the chances are that chemist will make more money than 99% of retail jobs. Too bad.
If you do not understand what is meant by giving children equal opportunity in life, the concept of course is lost on you.
If you read my post, that is exactly what I did.
I specifically posted my opinion, that it is not the companies' faults, it is up to the government to set limits on salaries, provide equal opportunities for education for all etc. etc. .
Hurrah, it is better than in Somalia.
Where did you get the idea that I am complaining?
A pet peeve I see is at Walmart. I don't work there, but I see wasted resources. They are all about keeping costs low, making lots of sales etc.... but they waste 4-5 employees per store..... the people who are door greeters (who don't even greet but sit in a chair), the person who stands by the escalator doing basically nothing.
They should axe these people and replace them with more able-bodied people who can stock shelves, clean up messes in aisles, more cashiers etc.... it would make their service a bit better. Heck, make one them an extra shopping cart jockey, since the parking lots can be crammed with random carts all over the place.
I don't see any value in those 4-5 people. Not only is their functional value zero, but they aren't even the "happy greeter" and such. They look miserable.
Our local library and bank branch have uniform security folks. The one in the bank branch sits in a chair. I heard the library guard is to stop people from molesting little kids in the washroom.
What has this got to do with you? Walmart is a corporation that does whatever it think is right to maximize profit. Any savings that they can make are passed on to the consumer, which is why people shop there. If you don't like their service, how the employees look, etc. don't shop there.
KBear, do you mean the one between Islington and Kipling (that's Etobicoke I think)?
I dropped off clothes there at times.
Maybe Goodwill just got beat in the market place.
Places like Value Village, church basements, One $1 Dollar Store, did they kicked Goodwill asses among the low income shopper / cheapo shopper?
This is a very interesting business story.
Goodwill should immediately arrange for a spot on that CBC show, Dragons Den to get new funding before that show gets cancel and or before the CBC finally bites the dust too.
Just the times we live in. The Neo-Liberals are winning, and not the poor classes, no matter what the politicians say or who's in power!
Many clothes now are donated to other charities who will pick them up from your home. Maybe they sell them to Goodwill too which must incur a new cost for them.
