Small Business Owners Fight To Stay Afloat While Supporting Higher Wages For Workers

PORTLAND, Maine — When the pandemic shut down businesses in March, it didn’t give Michelle Souliere a break from running her independent book store. Exhausted and stressed, Souliere worked “like a maniac” for months after the city shutdowns, filing mail orders, setting up online systems and researching coronavirus safety protocols. When the shop reopened in July, she found it surreal when customers would ask her how her “time off” was. They were “completely oblivious to the fight for survival that small business owners in town had been undergoing,” she said. Portland small business owners, like Souliere at the Green Hand Bookshop, are in a tough predicament.