Ottawa SUN: Ontario wage hike a mixed bag in Ottawa
Ontario's move to raise minimum wage to $11 per hour Thursday was greeted by very mixed reaction in Ottawa.
Today in Canada, more 1.3 million of our children live in poverty. Low wages remain a significant barrier to all Canadians achieving self sufficiency through work. According to Statscan, more than a million people across the country worked for minimum wages or less last year, the fourth year in a row that this shamefully persistent number has been above the one million mark. While levels of education and experience have increased and productivity has grown, real wages remained stagnant from 1981 to 2004 while median wages have grown at a snail’s pace (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). Clearly, low wages are a large part of why so many working Canadians remain poor.
Despite the need to address working poverty and the popular support for government action to do so, Canada’s elected leadership has been disturbingly timid on the wage-raising front. No recent increase to the minimum wage or poverty reduction strategy seriously addresses the issue of the sinking wage floor.
The need for a grassroots Wages Rising movement in Canada is clearer than ever!
ACORN members for the last 10 years have been fighting on a range of wage campaigns. ACORN members and allies won a precedent setting Living Wage Victory in New Westminster, BC. They fought the good fight in Ottawa for a Living wage that built momentum for Minimum Wage campaigns for $10/hour in 2008 and $14/hour in 2014 in Ontario.
Capacity from each campaign helps build the next and ACORN members from coast to coast are excited to fight!
Currently:
· Living wage campaigns are just getting started in Toronto and Halifax.
· ACORN members are fighting for a federal fair wage of $15/hour for a) workers under federal jurisdiction b) contracted employees and Employees of firms that enter into service contracts with the federal government and c) Employees of firms receiving economic development assistance (grants, tax abatements, low interest loans, etc.) from the federal government.
· BC ACORN and NS ACORN are also fighting for $15 minimum wage campaigns!
Grace Iyabosa sits with hospital patients through the long nights, close at hand in case they need help.
Financially speaking, Diane Rochon says she had a better quality of life when she was the age of her two daughters than they do now.