It's a search every bit as challenging as expeditions to find the sea-serpent Cadborosaurus -- the hunt for the day the provincial government considers it the "right time" to raise the minimum wage.
In ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, the minimum wage has been frozen at $8 an hour for more than eight years. When the economy was strong, the government said it wasn't the right time to raise the minimum wage because employees were in demand and getting raises anyway. When it slumped, the government said it wasn't the right time because employers couldn't afford it and jobs might be lost.
During the long freeze, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ has gone from the highest minimum wage in the country to the lowest. Minimum wage workers have seen a 16-per-cent real pay cut in that time, given inflation. Living on $300 a week was difficult in 2001; it is much more difficult today.
A variety of reports and campaigns have urged an increase in the minimum wage. Most provinces have authorized a series of increases over the past decade and all nine other provinces have raised their minimum wages in the past 12 months.
Labour Minister Murray Coell defends the eight-year freeze. Raising the minimum to $10 a hour could result in the loss of 50,000 jobs "in the long term," Coell maintains. Most people already earn much more, with the average hourly wage for all workers about $22.
Economists differ on the effects of an increase in the minimum wage. The impact is significant for sectors that rely on inexpensive labour, where higher wage costs can be an incentive to reduce hours or find other ways to cut jobs. But competitive pressures to maintain service levels can lead employers to find other solutions, including higher prices.
The logical extension of the Liberal government's minimum-wage freeze would be eliminating the protection entirely. That hasn't happened, nor should it. Some 60,000 British Columbians are working for minimum wage. For many, the prospects of significant increases without government action are slim.
While some are working part-time, others are attempting to support themselves and children on the income. We are condemning them to a grim life.
Wage laws temper market forces. We have concluded, as a society, that people working full-time should be guaranteed a minimum return for their time.
And back in 2001, the government decided that minimum should then be $8 an hour. Since then, those employees have fallen well below that promised standard of living. (While MLAs have awarded themselves substantial raises and indexed their pay so it would rise automatically each year.)
Questions around the minimum wage raise broader issues. Michael Prince, a social policy professor at the University of Victoria, told the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ he supports an increase, but a broader examination of anti-poverty strategies is needed.
That's true. From helping people develop skills to improve their job prospects to mental-health supports to education to break the poverty cycle, a wide range of co-ordinated measures could make a difference.
Some measures are obvious. A single disabled person, with no other income and unable to work, receives $375 a month toward rent and $531 a month. That's a total income of $906 a month -- that's poverty by any measure, and it should be raised. Some 70,000 people in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ rely on income assistance disability benefits.
In the meantime, the government should raise the minimum wage to a realistic level in a series of increments over the next 18 months.
