LIFE SUPPORT
Every few years non-governmental organizations re-evaluate the cost of living in major cities throughout the world. Here in Canada the Living Wage Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives add up the cost of rent, groceries, extended healthcare and childcare, and a monthly bus pass for a family of four. From that they calculate the minimum wage both parents would have to earn, working full-time, to cover these bare essentials. They publish this figure, labelling it the “living wage” for that region.
For those of us who notice, we’re left to look on in horror as we contemplate the considerable gulf between this bare-essentials calculation and the local minimum wage. In many regions, such as Vancouver, the minimum wage is as low as half that of the living wage. In most Canadian cities the living wage is calculated to be around $16 per hour, with a minimum wage around $11. In Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto the “living” rate is closer to $21, while minimum wage sits around the same national average of $11.
What I notice about the living wage is that, even at what many consider an unreasonably lofty pay rate, this still doesn’t allow anyone to go to school or pay off their student loan debt, save for a down-payment, put money away for retirement, emergency, or just a rainy day, or anything else we all think of as fundamental in a prosperous Western democracy – and what previous generations knew to be their entitlement. For instance, without so much as a high school education, only waking up and going to work every day, both my grandfathers were able to have all the above and much more (like, for example, own a house, a vehicle or two, and a boat), and do this on just one blue-collar salary. By contrast, today the ambitious, unpopular, and scarce “living wage” is only enough that (if two people achieve it and never get sick or lose their job) you and your family don’t end up on the street. In this way it’s only life support really.
You’ve likely witnessed the months of outrage in the media, coming from all the usual suspects, when the government proposes a paltry increase to the minimum wage of even a few cents – even if it means (in the case of Vancouver, the urban center with the highest cost of living in Canada) adjusting the minimum wage from being the lowest in the country up to -oh ya, that’s right: still the lowest minimum wage in the country. With business, industry, Conservative pundits, and right-wing think-tanks continually and vociferously opinionating against even these most tepid non-improvements you can just imagine the eye-rolling, guffawing, and wind-bagging that settles over the mediascape when someone starts talking seriously about a living wage.
It’s in this climate that some folks (the noble and brave) have been pushing for a moderate increase of the minimum wage up to $15. This mirrors a concerted effort to do the same across the United States. What to notice here is that the cost of living is far less in many cities and states of America than here at home. (How many Canadians cross the border regularly to buy groceries and gasoline and other goods? And how many television shows display massive new detached homes on sizable lots, in major U.S. cities, for a fraction of the cost of tear-downs in many of Canada’s largest urban areas?) Moreover, notice that a $15 U.S. minimum wage converts to $20 Canadian at today’s exchange rate. And then notice that in many settings across Canada an increase to $15 still leaves people living below poverty and, even without children, struggling to pay their modest bills.
In 2013 Sheila Block, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario, showed that, in Ontario alone, 150,000 minimum wage workers were between the ages of 25 and 54 (and, of course, disproportionately women and minorities). These are people not living at home with their parents but who need their earnings to feed, house, and clothe themselves and their dependants. Most disturbingly for me, we know that the companies employing these folks are often the most profitable companies around. From oil companies to banks, big box stores to grocery chains, many of these entities pay staff (who are the public face of the organization and critical to their operations) below a living wage. Banks, who bring in billions above previous record highs, and still more every year, none-the-less pay their tellers just above minimum wage. Oil and gas companies – who are subsidized by taxpayers around the globe to the tune of half a TRILLION dollars ($4 billion in Canada alone) and have cash and real estate holdings greater than entire countries – still feel obligated to pay their service station employees a minimum (far below poverty) wage. As well, every mall in the country is full of national and international brands, ones with double-digit annual sales growth and many millions in growth in annual net profits, who offer their sales teams less than full-time hours and the lowest possible rate of pay allowed by law. (And many of these organizations, as you are fully aware, increase their earnings by cutting hours and pay, or by cutting staff altogether, while simultaneously, and often dramatically, increasing the “compensation” for those doing the axing. And, because they’re managed by boards composed mostly of satirists and comedians, they often do so while publicly complaining that their staff and their customers lack loyalty.) This, we are told, is normal and what a healthy economy looks like. I can’t imagine a scenario more deranged.
For minimum wage to be at all rational it has to relate to the living wage in some sense (or at least to some reasonable, transparent measure of the cost of living.) If this isn’t going to be the case then minimum wage must then be restricted to a population who doesn’t depend on their earnings to sustain themselves. (So, sixteen-year-olds who are still in high school and living with their parents, say.) When unemployment is high, and the sectors with most of the job openings are retail and fastfood, as was the case for a good chunk of last year, people take the jobs that are available, not the jobs the want or are qualified for. And once they’re forced into a minimum wage job it is almost impossible to get out without assistance of some kind. They simply cannot put any money aside or take time off to better their lot. In fact, in this way, minimum wage is not meaningfully distinguishable from many forms indentured and slave labour we made illegal so long ago. Just think about that for a minute. (And if you disagree just work through the details while making sense of the “freedom” a minimum wage earner has – given their total lack of time, resources, mobility, and money...)
Luckily there are countless solutions. Individuals, employers, whole industries, and governments at all levels can improve the situation and in a whole variety of ways. So let’s get on it!
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