Prominent San Francisco Bookstore to Close, Citing Minimum Wage Increase

Date: February 05, 2015

$15 an Hour Wage Fatal

A number of media outlets have noted that a
well-known San Francisco bookstore, Borderland Books, is set to close due to
the impact of the minimum wage increase. Back in November, San Francisco voters
approved a measure to raise the city’s minimum wage from $10.74 to $12.25 an
hour in May, ultimately boosting it to $15 an hour by July 2018. One media
outlet noted that works out to a minimum annual salary of $31,000 per year for
a full-time employee.

Borderlands
owner Alan Beatts wrote in a blog posting announcing the closing, “Although all
of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in princip[le] and we
believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco –
Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject
to that minimum wage.”

What this Means for Small Business:

San
Francisco’s minimum wage increase will impact many small business owners
operating under tight profit margins similar to Borderland Books. Their ability
to raise prices is extremely limited,  restricting
the ability of some businesses to absorb wage increases.

Additional Reading:

Borderlands’ closure
notice
is
posted online. The Fiscal Times, in a piece picked up by Yahoo!
Finance
,
reports on the closure, as do the San
Francisco Examiner
,
Forbes and KGO-TV.

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