Beyond the new $14 minimum wage
Effective Jan. 1, 2018, Bill 148 (The Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act) became provincial law. Among its long-overdue provisions include:
- A $14 minimum wage
- 10 days of guaranteed emergency leave
- The requirement of employers to pay the growing mass of part-time and precarious workers at the same rate as their full-time peers
In the first week of Bill 148’s legality, Tim Hortons franchises — such as those in Cobourg, Ont. — slashed their staff’s paid breaks and other benefits as a response to the raised wage. These actions drew public criticism of the franchise’s owners (who are the heirs of the chain’s founder). Although justified, I believe that much of the public outrage (including Premier Wynne’s Machiavellian statement on the matter) fails to address the current government’s role in facilitating the social desperation faced by workers. In this most unpredictable stage of late capitalism, a great scourge of the Earth has reared its ugly head upon society once again: the working poor. True, we have had working people living below a decent standard of living for some time in Ontario, however, evidence finds that conditions have been declining, not improving, among the poor.
As such, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that between 1997 and 2015, the proportion of working Ontarians earning the minimum wage had increased five fold. Last year, 25 per cent of Ontario’s workers earned under $15 per hour. These statistics bear adverse implications, as for a family in Toronto the 2015 minimum living wage was estimated at $18.52, with two parents working 37.5 hours per week. For Guelph, the figure was $16.62.
The last time labour laws were substantially updated in Ontario was almost 18 years ago under Ontario’s Employee Standards Act. Liberals have held the consecutive balance of power in Ontario for 14 of those 18 years, opting only now to confront the issue, mere months before an election campaign. How generous. So, before anyone congratulates the Liberals, let’s first review some of the changes they’ve enacted on behalf of workers.To start, we’ll survey the federal Liberals. In 2016, Canada’s finance minister, Bill Morneau, proposed a piece of legislation called Bill C-27, which would have allowed, in federally-regulated industries, the replacement of defined-benefit pension plans for employees with defined-contribution pension plans.
In other words, some of these employees currently have the option to put aside a set amount of money on which they can generate interest for retirement, all through their workplace. If the investment returns made on behalf of workers turn out to be less than expected, employers “must tap into the company’s earnings to make up the difference” for their workers, according to Investopedia.
In replacing this arrangement, companies could instead offer a plan where employers are not obligated to guarantee a set amount of money for their employees to live on in retirement, saving companies from having to bite into their revenues. Effectively, this piece of high-caliber Liberal legislation would undermine the security of Canadian workers, not strengthen it. Further, Morneau was alleged to personally profit from this law, according to Global News, until a conflict-of-interest scandal prompted Morneau to sell off questionable assets. In Ontario, things aren’t much better for minimum-wage workers, even with the hike. Despite provincial Liberals furthering a new agenda based on the expansion of pharmacare, federal Liberals have strayed from their rhetoric of steep government spending. In turn, the feds have “reduced the increase of Canada Health Transfers by three per cent annually,” according to CBC. This, combined with provincial Liberals’ own cuts, has forced hospitals across Ontario to increase parking fees at an unprecedented rate. Dr. Andrew Pinto, a physician and public health worker, recently stated that living on a low-income is “associated with physical problems, so people have higher rates of chronic diseases.” Thus, the lower health transfers and higher parking fees (which are said to influence 52 per cent of surveyed Ontarians’ duration of stay and frequency of hospital visits) acts as a regressive tax on both low- and middle-income Ontarians.
And of course, the Ontario Liberals voted to impose back-to-work legislation on striking college faculty (70 per cent of whom are part-time, with limited job security and suboptimal pay), despite a resounding 86 per cent of faculty rejecting the College Employer Council’s final offer last November. But hold on. One cannot forget Tim Hortons’ role in the recent outrage associated with the wage hike. Restaurant Brands International, which purchased Tim’s in 2014, has seen their stock prices and dividend payments to investors both double over the last three years. And despite Cobourg workers’ increase in wage, CBC reports that “their biweekly pay cheque will actually be $51 lower than it was before the minimum wage hike” as a result of their decrease in benefits and loss of paid breaks.
At a time when the average top-earning CEO earns 200 times as much as the average worker, it is important that the effects of corporate greed and government ambivalence are not overlooked in the wage debate. Our social reality encompasses a greater sum of working-class Ontarians finding themselves either gripping tightly to a minimum level of financial stability, or sliding further away from a dignified standard of living. The difficulties that Ontarians increasingly face cannot be trivialized. And more importantly: in a country as prosperous as Canada, all working people, whether they be faculty member or food chain employee, should be able to pursue a dignified life, liberty, and security of the person.
Graphic by Frances Esenwa/The Ontarion