Premier Kathleen Wynne's 75 cent minimum wage increase as a "way forward" isn't enough for most of us. Screencap via.
On January 29th, Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne announced an increase in the province’s minimum wage from $10.25 to $11 per hour. Wynne called the move a “fair adjustment” even though anti-poverty advocates have been agitating for an immediate increase to $14 per hour.
$11 per hour is an increase so small as to be meaningless. After this increase the minimum wage will leave people living 16 percent below the poverty line, according to the Workers’ Action Centre. It’s a bullshit move that looks good on the surface and, no doubt, is intended to stave off continuing calls for real change.
Wynne cited the difficulties of living on the current minimum wage as her reasoning for the increase, saying: “I think the vast majority of people in Ontario understand that it’s very difficult to make ends meet living on minimum wage, and that there needs to be a fair way of allowing minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living.”
All of that is true in the same way a statement like “the sky is usually blue” is true. It’s so basic and obvious that there’s no point in saying it unless you’ve got something else to add. What Wynne conveniently fails to mention, though, is that with an extra $0.75 per hour, none of that will change.
I work in retail, making slightly more than the new minimum wage, so the increase will not affect me. I have no dependents, no serious medical conditions, and no mortgage to pay down; plus I earn some extra money writing. As you may have guessed from the title of this article, I’m barely making ends meet.
I’m earning so little I don’t have to make payments on my student loans. Even so, nearly half of my income goes toward my rent, and after a couple of bills and some groceries, I’m lucky if I can afford to go out for a beer. Even the most minor change can throw my entire budget into chaos.
There are people all over Ontario who need to stretch their paycheques much further than I do: parents, people with dependent family members, people with medical expenses or large loans, the list goes on and on. Even a restricted diet could cause problems for someone living on such a tight amount of dough.
The National Post spoke to one woman about her attempts to live off the current minimum wage: “Amelia White of Toronto, who works full time in a grocery store for minimum wage, said she will still have to look for additional work so she can pay the bills.
‘I have to decide if I want to pay for rent, hydro or buy food. It’s not enough to look after my child and it’s not enough to live on,’ said White. ‘I pay my rent first and then I miss the bills and then I catch up the next month. It’s a cycle that goes on and on and on, so you just have to do what you can.’”
There are a few arguments people marshal against the call to implement a living wage (a minimum wage that would allow its recipients to, uh, live). One is that the only people earning minimum wage are teenagers working for spending money, so who cares whether or not they can feed a family? Another is that forcing employers to pay their workers more will result in fewer hires and may even cause some layoffs, making the increase an overall loss for workers.
Conveniently, The Progressive Economics Forum rebutted both of the above arguments already. The “only teens work for minimum wage”canard is a popular one, but it is patently untrue. Of workers earning minimum wage, 40 percent are over 24; of workers earning more than minimum wage, but less than $14 per hour, 60 percent are over 24. Teens are still a sizeable chunk of these groups, but there are also tens if not hundreds of thousands of adults working for low wages.
People like White and I, and the other nearly 500,000 workers in Ontario earning minimum wage, obviously have a vested interest in demanding higher pay. But those who can’t find work at all might be scared away from the fight for a living wage, by claims that if they have to pay more, businesses will stop hiring people.
This argument ignores the fact that workers are also consumers, and with more money in their pockets they are obviously going to spend more. So while higher wages will help workers, they will also help business revenue, which will offset the cost of paying people more.
Interestingly, Wynne said she finds it shocking “that we have a Conservative party that seems not to care, seems not to think that it’s their responsibility to have an opinion or to care about people making minimum wage.” Meanwhile, in the real world, Wynne’s increase will still leave 500,000 people and their families in a rut where they’ll be scrambling to eat and pay rent. And there are another million workers that are earning just a tad more than minimum wage, who are also getting fucked into poverty.
In fairness to Wynne, she plans to introduce legislation that would index the minimum wage to inflation, which would mean that while workers would still be living in poverty, they wouldn’t be descending deeper and deeper below the poverty line with each passing year. By throwing down just enough money that people will continue to fight amongst themselves for the scraps rather than demand real change, Wynne.
@tyelland