At least one business leader is telling smaller companies to embrace the prime minister’s ambitious minimum-wage target or pack it in, and the organization he leads wants to accelerate the timeline for hitting that target.

“Since the minimum wage is set to keep rising in the future, companies need to run their businesses based on that assumption,” Takeshi Niinami, who chairs Keizai Doyukai, said during a news conference last Friday.

Business managers who are unable to keep up with the minimum-wage increase schedule “are unfit for their positions” and their companies “should exit,” Niinami added.