This Thursday, Saskatchewan’s minimum wage will go up 30 cents to $10.50 per hour. It’s the seventh increase since 2007 – but that doesn’t mean it’s enough to live on, according to a left-leaning national think tank.
“If you are working full time year round, and earning a minimum wage you’re still part of the working poor,” said Trish Hennessy, with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“The minimum wage is an arbitrary measure. It doesn’t actually reflect what it takes to make ends meet and pay the bills at the end of the day,” she told Global News.
READ MORE: $17.36 per hour needed to get by in Edmonton, says living wage report
Hennessy says a more realistic “living wage” for Saskatoon would be in the range of $16.77 per hour, according to Upstream, a Saskatoon based group.
“That’s a lot higher than the provincially mandated minimum wage,” she said.
READ MORE: Saskatchewan’s minimum wage going up in October
Hennessy is trying to get employers around the country to look at a “living wage,” rather than minimum wage – a concept she believes is “absolutely attainable.”
She says there is a “new wave” of employers who are willing to look at it.
- Thousands of Canada’s rail workers have a strike mandate. What happens now?
- Bird flu: Experts urge more surveillance in Canada — before it’s too late
- TD Bank hit with $9.2M fine over failing to report suspicious transactions
- Can the Bank of Canada cut rates before the U.S.? What Macklem, economists say
“When … you’re walking by any office building in this country, in this province, and you see a janitor pushing a broom and you go I wonder if he can actually feed his kids, it changes the conversation, it humanizes it,” said Hennessy.
“We’re actually working with employers across Canada who are saying ‘I’m voluntarily becoming a living wage employer because I know that when you pay the rent, put your kids in child care and pay for transportation and food, there’s not much left over’,” she said.
READ MORE: Reality check: Does the NDP minimum wage plan leave out 99% of minimum wage earners?
There are many who say businesses can’t afford to pay above minimum wage, but Hennessy argues there is actually a strong business care for it.
“When you pay your employees more money they stay, so you save money in terms of hiring, training, you save in terms of staff retention,” she said.
But beyond the business case, she argues that minimum wage has become devalued. Decades ago it did mean a wage that people could live on, said Hennessy, who grew up in Willow Bunch, Sask.
“I grew up with the notion that you should work, and work should pay. If we actually agree to go back to that principle, that if you’re working, work should pay, we could within the span of a couple of years wipe out the concept of working poverty,” she said.
Hennessy is in Saskatoon to speak Monday evening at an event put on by the Walrus Foundation called The Walrus Talks: Resilience, at the Remai Arts Centre at 7 p.m. CT.
A number of speakers are giving seven minute talks on the concept of community building in difficult times – part of a national series of similar events.
Comments