Page 16 - Fall 2017 english

“With us being a private club, we can’t base any increase on rounds played. We need to base it on memberships sold in both golf and curling. With all being equal, we would need to increase membership by $150 across the board, but the biggest issue is that $150 increase to the curling membership would be a 25 percent increase,” said Arnott.
“For our full golf members, the increase would be, on average, 4 percent. As you can see, this model would never work as the curling increase would all but eliminate our curling membership. We would more than likely look at an increase of 4.5 percent in curling and 4.5 percent in golf to be fair from a ratio perspective,” he said.
“We will change our hiring practice, but I don’t think we will vary by too much as we need to provide a standard of service and that will be reflected in their membership fees,” added Arnott.
He does, however, see the day coming very quickly that pro shop automation, for example, would include a self-checkout line.
Mark Seabrook, owner of the 27-hole Canadian Golf & Country Club in the Ottawa area sees the lounge opening later, the backshop hours being reduced, cuts to turf care/maintenance budgets, no club cleaning, less beverage carts and a reduction in employees with more duties shifted to salaried staff.
Shawn Evans, CEO of GolfNorth Properties, which operates 28 courses across Southern Ontario and Nova Scotia, expects green fees to go up, although no price has been set yet, while the number of employees will be reduced, primarily in food and beverage.
“If the increase is not a win for businesses or for the individuals
it claims to
help, then the politicians may be the only ones coming out on top.”
Evans, who says his labour cost is about 38 percent of total revenue, adds the number of hours for existing staff members will need to be cut as well, through various means such as reducing food and beverage hours of operation and shoulder season operations, including starting the season later in the spring and closing earlier in the fall.
“The issue is compounded by the fact that future minimum wage increases are tied to inflation. This continues to cause inflationary pressure on the market in future years,” said Evans.
Arnott expects youth unemploy- ment to increase substantially in the years following the minimum wage hitting $15 and continuing to rise with inflation. Kelly says there are other ways to help people improve their job prospects.
“The reason it’s called a minimum wage is because it is a minimum,” he said. “You’re on it for a short period of time and then, you move on to something beyond
that, but there are some, for a variety of reasons, who get stuck in a minimum wage job and we should be looking at ways to help those people through either additional training, through means like raising the personal exemptions for income taxes, so that we don’t end up taxing people at the lowest income levels or providing other forms of credits,” said Kelly.
MOVING FORWARD
Although the minimum wage increase will be challenging, Calderwood believes that the golf industry will persevere.
“The golf industry is resilient. Small business operators in general, which is what the golf industry consists of, are innovative. They find ways to get over hurdles and get around things,” he said.
“It’s frustrating with uncontrol- lable external circumstances like government or weather, but they’re pretty resilient. They’ll get through it,” added Calderwood.
“Golf course owners and operators will be coping with it in a way other than what the Liberals in Ontario are claiming, which is an improvement in the employment situation for people in that wage category,” said Calderwood.
So, the wrapping may look spectacular right now, but once the package is open, it may not be what workers were expecting.
Golf Business Canada
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Golf Business Canada