Real Jobs That Deserve Real Pay
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle.
I still have clear memories of my first jobs in my teens and early 20s. At 16, I engraved names and job titles on plastic name tags. After I graduated from high school, I spent two summers mowing lawns at a cemetery in Saint John. I worked at a pizza place in Halifax when I was at university.
They were all minimum wage jobs; I still remember the pay stubs at the cemetery that displayed my $4.25 per hour wage. It would jump to “time and a half” (nearly $6.50!) if I worked more than 44 hours a week. I also remember how happy I was to switch from being a short-order cook to working as a waiter because I would get bigger tips in addition to my minimum-wage pay.
I was thinking about these early experiences in low-wage jobs as debates raged over the last two weeks about the public sector CUPE strike in New Brunswick and the rent control and minimum wage issues in Nova Scotia.
The cost of living is rising dramatically on everything from housing to food and fuel in both provinces, but there is widespread concern that wage hikes are not keeping pace with inflation.
In New Brunswick, more than 20,000 government workers – a group that includes school custodians, bus drivers, social workers, and jail guards, among others – went on strike a week ago looking for better pay.
At the outset of the labour dispute, the union locals were looking for a 12 percent increase over four years; the province was countering with 10. Neither side’s proposals matched the rate of inflation as it stands now.
Higher rents in both provinces are contributing to the higher cost of living.
In Nova Scotia, Premier Tim Houston’s government recently extended a rent-control program introduced by the former Liberal government as a temporary measure to cap rent increases at two percent per year during the pandemic. Statistics Canada recently released data that showed a year-over-year rental price increase of 7.5 percent in Nova Scotia in August and 8.7 percent in New Brunswick.
To his credit, Houston opposed the rent control measure while he was opposition leader but changed his mind in the months after he became premier. But he still seems out of step on the wage debate.
In the legislature this week, there was a heated debate about increasing the minimum wage from $12.95 to $15 an hour. Houston opposed the measure, citing the negative impact on small businesses.
“I do believe that there is a significant risk that a $15 minimum wage could be the tipping point that puts companies out of business, then you have people out of work,” said Houston.
In the midst of the debate, he made an inflammatory and insulting statement that he has since apologized for.
“I don’t know many Nova Scotians that grow up thinking, ‘boy, I hope I make minimum wage when I grow up’…they want real jobs,” he said.
Higgs didn’t say anything that insensitive about the CUPE strikers, but he also seems more in tune, and empathetic with the concerns of business owners, rather than employees.
This is natural given his past as an executive with Irving Oil and his current job as a steward of public finances. His job is not unlike that of a company CEO; he’s merely trying to get a deal that best serves the bottom line for the government like he would for a company.
“The wages are very good in the public sector,” Higgs told CBC News. “I know it’s easy to argue inflation. But it’s where you start. And what I’m seeing here is that they’re starting at a very strong level.”
Higgs suggested that the public sector should be more in line with the private sector, which offers lower wages and benefits for similar work. He is right, except there should be upward pressure on private-sector wages, not downward pressure on public-sector ones.
It’s obviously difficult to make judgements in the middle of a strike, but at the time I wrote this, the government had enriched its offer on the wage issue. On Friday afternoon, it announced a proposal for a 15 percent increase over five years. At the same time, though, it also issued an order for striking healthcare employees to return to work for the duration of the strike.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, what matters to me is that the tone shifts to acknowledge the need to raise wages for lower and middle-income workers in the face of rising living costs, even as businesses and governments face real challenges managing the financial hardships of the pandemic.
When it comes to workers on the lower end of the wage scale, there remain big gains to be made across the region.
In a Huddle story this week, Associate Editor Trevor Nichols wrote about a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) that says the “living wage” in Halifax is $22.05 per hour, almost $10 more than the current minimum wage of $12.95.
The CCPA calculates the wage based on a family of four with two kids, with both parents working full-time. The report considers the rising costs of housing and essentials like food in the region in the last year.
Related: Halifax’s ‘Living Wage’ Nearly $10 Higher Than Legal Minimum Wage
Some business leaders complain that the $2,000-montly Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was too generous and a disincentive to return to work. But the CCPA report says it more accurately reflects what people should be paid to meet their basic needs.
“There are lessons to be learned from this benefit; it was needed to fill the gaps in existing services and programs like Employment Insurance. The minimum level of support provided is instructive,” the report reads.
Of course, there are two sides to this debate. The cost of living is increasing but so is the cost of doing business, and small business owners and landlords have legitimate concerns about increasing minimum wages and capping rents.
These are blunt policy instruments that many argue are ineffective and often exacerbate problems, leading to increased unemployment rates in the case of rising minimum wages and decreased investment in the rental housing market in the case of rent caps.
Related: Why Rent Control Isn’t The Answer To Rising Housing Costs
On this debate, I tend to think like my colleague Trevor, who wrote about rising rents a couple of weeks ago in this space. He said that economic arguments against the rent control policy must be weighed against the emotional and financial toll that rising rents have on people with limited ability to pay more.
“Are our cities better off with a less regulated housing market, but a bunch of folks driven out of their communities living lonelier, more isolated, less secure lives? Take away rent control and that will happen to more people. Whatever economic benefit putting them in that situation brings, it can’t possibly be worth it,” he wrote.
I look at the wage debate in much the same way. At the same time as we are talking about addressing labour shortages across the region, our politicians are making public arguments about the harmful impacts of wage increases for unionized and low-wage workers, hardly a message we want to send to young people or newcomers we want to build lives here.
I worked for low wages when I was a young person, but I learned a lot and worked with great people. I know Houston was speaking in the heat of the moment earlier this week, but they were “real jobs” being done by people who weren’t just students like me saving money for college and living under my parents’ roof. They deserve real pay too.
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