Was looking for a thread to drop this into and this one will do - it's close enough.
Scanning the National Post today and came across this article.
It caught my attention because some forty or so years ago, my wife was on a small volunteer committee that ran the thrift shop at the Brandon General Hospital. The thrift shops mandate is to sell suitable new merchandise that people can buy as gifts. (It's not a used clothing type of place - this is everything from candles to large ornaments etc) The profits go into the hospital to buy new equipment such as MRIs.
Anyway they thought about a new way to make money and finally settled on opening a Tim Horton's in the hospital, which they did and which has been raking in the cash ever since making huge profits and was, at least back then, one of the most profitable franchises going. So naturally I said to myself. "How can you lose money on a Timmy's?" The answer in one word is unions. The hourly rate paid at the hospital's Timmy's staff is nearly twice the minimum wage. The balance sheets are in the article.
The issue starkly showcases the trouble with public sector unions for whom the balance sheet for operations are entirely meaningless. If there are losses you just go to the public and claw some additional cash out of it in taxes. There are clearly some public service organizations that have no income generated to base a profit/loss analysis on, but for something like a cafeteria (and at the end of the day that's what a Timmy's is) which sells a service/product to the public, profit should matter. Where I live now is a moderate-sized regional hospital which has a small coffee shop where most of the food comes out of a Japanese style vending machine albeit there is counter staff as well. Like in Brandon, it's run by a hospital volunteer auxiliary which is currently on a campaign to raise a million dollars for new equipment.
It boggles my mind that hospital administrators, like those in Windsor, would run an operation that loses a half million annually.
