Entire industries could be wiped out or move overseas.
This proposal is just another death wish. It delivers to business a simple message: This is Detroit; it costs you more to do business here than anywhere else in Michigan. If you don't like it, leave.
If the proposed ordinance is adopted it will hurt small women- and minority-owned businesses the most, the majority of which are already struggling mightily to do business in this city of higher-than-average costs of doing business.
These regulations, taken in combination with other pending requirements, will have serious affects on the petroleum industry, the economy, and the nation--reducing investment in capacity and new technologies, making domestic refiners less competitive in the global marketplace, increasing imports of refined products by up to 500,000 barrels per day, increasing consumer prices for products such as gasoline and heating oil, and reducing industry employment.
Why, then, would [the Boston City Council] threaten to drive away businesses by signing on to a murky, unpredictable, and divisive ordinance that requires employers and their subcontractors to open their books, including wages, deductions, and fringe benefits, to all "applicable" city departments? The Internal Revenue Service and the state Department of Revenue are required to keep such information confidential. The city ordinance requires it to be made public, placing businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
People on the other side of the issue, I understand where they're coming from. They want their product funded. But my industry is paying the tax to some degree. That's the bottom line. Admittedly, some of the tax is passed on, but my restaurant and food service operators are paying some of this tax out of their own pocket.
The proposal couldn't be better calculated to drive business out of the city and encourage corruption.
I understand it is called a minimum wage bill, but in fact it is a layoff bill….Kids will lose their jobs, minorities will lose their jobs, senior citizens will lose their jobs. In small towns, in center cities, marginal businesses will be devastated.
The basic idea is OSHA [and by extension MSHA] has lost its purpose. Its purpose started off being the health and safety of workers, and now it's been more like a cop on the beat who gets rewarded for the number of tickets he can hand out. And it has become an anti-business operation of the federal government.
This could be $10,000 a year on my bottom line. This is not the way to do it: Every time we need something done raise taxes. I couldn't run my business this way.
