Editor:
Re: “Volunteers give their time to short-staffed eateries,” Aug. 13
If the members of Coasters Helping Coasters (CHC) want to assist struggling restaurants by taking paid positions as wait and kitchen staff, more power to them. Instead, they’ve adopted a bizarre form of volunteerism that undercuts hard-won workplace standards while doing nothing to address the root causes of the labour crisis in our community.
However badly businesses have suffered in the past year, it does not legitimize replacing paid workers with volunteers to bolster the bottom line. What message does it send to ask paid staff to work alongside people for whom service sector work is not so much a tough way to make the rent as a nostalgic trip to Bob’s Diner?
I wonder, does CHC plan to offer its unpaid labour to other businesses suffering from chronic staff shortages? Garbage pickup seems an obvious candidate, but perhaps hauling trash doesn’t hold the same romantic allure for CHC volunteers as does waiting tables.
It’s no mystery why Coast employers have trouble finding and keeping staff. At its heart, the labour crisis is a crisis of affordability. Years of neglect and indifference by politicians at all levels have put decent housing beyond the reach of even many moderately paid workers, much less those working for the obscenely low $15.20 minimum wage. Unchecked development and short-term rentals have intensified the shortfall of affordable housing to the point that an army of pretend wait staff can’t make a dent on the chronic labour shortage.
However well-intentioned, the CHC’s work-for-free campaign is misguided and naive. If you really want to help local businesses, volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, hold a fundraiser, or launch a GoFundMe campaign. Just please stop contributing to a counterproductive volunteer program that devalues paid labour and diverts attention from issues that demand immediate action.
Ian McLatchie, Davis Bay
