Minimum Wage Redux

Since I posted on the Minimum Wage controversy this morning some more matters have come to my attention. The usual canard that minimum wages only apply to students is far from the truth as Statistics Canada shows;

JUST OVER 1.3 million full-time employees aged 16 to 64 held low wage jobs (less than $10 dollars per hour) in 2004, representing one in every seven, or about 14% of all full-time employees.

This rate represented only a slight change from 16% in 1993. It peaked at just over 20% in 1996.

From 1993 to 2004, the proportion of women in low wage jobs remained roughly double that of men. Women are more likely to be in low paid occupations such as clerical, sales and service jobs.

Low wage work was also far more prevalent for those with lower levels of education.

The proportion of youngest workers aged 16 to 24 in low wage jobs was consistently three to four times that of older workers aged 25 to 64. This reflects the tendency of the labour market to reward experience and job tenure.

Those who were not their family's major income earner were not likely to live in a low income family. In 2004, only 3.5% of low wage workers who were not the family's major income earner lived in a low income family.

In contrast, the group of low wage workers who were their family's major or sole income earners (including people living on their own) was seven times more likely (almost 25%) to experience low income.

Among major income earners with a low wage, single people and lone parents experienced the highest rates of low income.

And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also makes this point in their paper on the need to increase the Minimum Wage in Nova Scotia.

Women, the minimum wage and poverty wages

A disproportionate percentage of minimum wage workers are women (63%)9. This is
confirmed by a Statistics Canada study that found that in 2003, across Canada “women
accounted for almost two-thirds of minimum wage earners, yet they make up just under
half of employees

The reality is that women continue to disproportionately make lower wages than men. In
2003, 25% of women earned less than $8.33, in contrast, 25% of men earned less than
$10.05. Leaving the minimum wage low puts a higher burden on women than on men.
Lower wages also leave many women dependent upon the male breadwinners in their
households Add to this the reality that women are also usually responsible for
maintaining their households and are the most vulnerable when it comes to getting laid
off and we get a picture of the gendered nature of poverty. We also get an indication of
the need for an increase in the minimum wage to support low income women and
households.

Minimum wage and part time work

Minimum wage workers are more likely to find themselves in part-time employment. In
2000, 57.2% of minimum wage workers worked part-time, while only 18.2% of the
overall workforce works part-time. While some workers may chose to work part-time,
others can only find part-time work, are often forced to work at more than one job to
make ends meet. Part-time employment not only tends to pay less but also does not
usually entitle workers to benefits. Another reason for increasing the minimum wage to
support part-time workers is that part-time work is often also short term and
unpredictable. Part-time workers need a minimum wage high enough to allow them not
only to live but to cover costs during the frequent breaks between jobs and during layoffs.

And the statistics show that those who rely on minimum wages, or just above, also rely on Food Banks more than they rely on shopping at Sobeys or Safeways.

Low-income earners are in a different position: Statistics Canada's 1998–99 National Population Health Survey reported that more than 10 percent of Canadians (an estimated 3 million people) were living in food-insecure households. In addition, the Institute for Research on Public Policy reports that food banks, which emerged in the 1980s in Canada, are growing quickly. Some 1800 new food banks opened between 1997 and 2002 (McIntyre 2003, 47). These developments suggest that, far from boosting restaurant and grocery store business, many low-income Canadians rely on charity for part of their food budget, or sometimes do without, as they are unable to fully participate in the market-based food retail sector.

It is this economic imbalance that shows we need not just minimum wages of $10 and hour but we need a social wage to replace the welfare system which is driving the working poor (women, single mothers, in particular) further into poverty.

The hidden faces of Canada's poor

Frances McNutt, a Scarborough mother with four young children under the age of 12, is struggling to get by on social assistance. But after the Ontario government claws back the National Child Benefit Supplement from her meagre payment and she pays her $990 rent, she is left with only $122 to feed and clothe her children and herself until the middle of each month when her $300 child-support cheque arrives.

After six years on welfare, McNutt is trying to get back on her feet by taking job training and doing volunteer work, but she admits it's hard.

McNutt is just one of the 5.3 million hidden faces of poverty in Canada. Tragically, the number of people living in poverty has grown – not dropped – in recent years despite economic boom times in many parts of this nation. Those good times, though, have bypassed many Canadians. Today, one in six Canadians, including 1.2 million children, live a miserable existence on incomes well below anyone's definition of poverty.

Which is why some insightful feminist bloggers blasted Cherniak over his post.

See:

Wages

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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Canadian CEO Blinks Earns $38,000

Top CEOs outearn average Canadians by January 2nd.

Hey that's today. It took less than 24 hours for Canada's fat cats to earn what you and I make in a year.

And the average worker has not made ANY real gain in wages for the past decade, which just adds insult to injury.

While the corporate elite got a 262% wage and bonus increase between 2005 and the end of 2006.

Perhaps we should declare January 2 the official Canadian Piggie Day for how much the boss class makes off our backs, while barely blinking an eye, or lifting a pen, or doing anything really productive besides lining their own pockets and those of their shareholders, who are all major pension funds, our pension funds in fact.

By the time the average Canadian grudgingly drags his or her still-hungover body into work Tuesday, swaps holiday tales with the stiff in the next cubicle, and hunkers down to work, the country's highest-paid CEOs will have already earned the worker's annual salary.

Minimum-wage workers would have barely rolled out of bed on New Year's Day by the time the country's top earners pocketed the $15,931 that will likely take the low-paid workers all of 2007 to make.

A study released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have earned an average Canadian's salary of $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.

That's not comforting news to the many Canadians whose primary motivation for heading back to work after the holidays is being able to start paying off their Christmas credit card bills.

"When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means," said Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice.

"Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around."

Mackenzie crunched the numbers based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada and Report on Business magazine's most recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.

According to his figures, by the time Canadians flick on the 6 p.m. news Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.

"I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close," Mackenzie quipped. "Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people's minds."

"How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and ... if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what's left for the rest of us?"

And don't forget these fat cats are a minority in Canada.

Wealth survey highlights include:

- The concentration of wealth at the high end continued to grow from
1999 to 2005.
- The wealthiest 20% families held 69.2% of the total net wealth in
Canada, up from 68.5% in 1999. That increase in share was entirely at
the expense of the middle 20%, whose share dropped from 8.8% to 8.4%.
- The net worth of the 20% of families at the bottom of the wealth
scale was negative again in 2005.
- Debt increased at a faster rate than net worth. More than 6.5% of
families literally operate under water -- with negative net worth.
- Between 1999 and 2005, the median debt load for families rose 38%,
from $32,300 in 1999 to $44,500 in 2005.

While the Fraser Institute declares Tax Freedom Day in June to show
how much government taxes us, the fact is that their prescription for tax cuts
have NOT benefited working class Canadians.

Canada is falling behind a number of OECD nations in a wide range of social and economic areas, and a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points to tax cuts as the culprit.

The study, by Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong, compares high-tax Nordic countries and low-tax Anglo-American countries on 50 social and economic measures and finds the high-tax Nordic countries score better in 42 categories.

According to the study, tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation’s citizens. For example, the high-tax Nordic countries have:

• lower rates of poverty, more equal income distribution, and more economic security for their workers;
• a higher GDP per capita;
• higher rates of household saving and net national saving;
• greater innovation, including a higher percentage of GDP spent on research and development;
• a higher ranking on their growth competitiveness by the World Economic Forum;
• higher rates of secondary school and university completion; and
• less drug use, more leisure time, and higher life satisfaction.

A tip o' the blog to Jacobs Super Patented Brain Thoughts

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Wages

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth

Plutocrats Rule

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Knight Of The Long Knives

This is from a Blogging Tory.... But what to do about Peter MacKay? It may now be safe politically for Harper to dump one of the weakest links in Cabinet, or if not to punt him from Cabinet, to shuffle him somewhere where he can do less harm than in Foreign Affairs.

You can literally hear the knives being sharpened now as the Cabinet Shuffle begins in earnest on the good ship Tory Titanic.

As for Pete being harmful in Foreign Affairs, I think not.

I am afraid his political optics have been all about his Affiars this year. And at least one of his alleged affairs has been with a Foreigner. So I would say he has made Foreign Affairs his own.

Between bitching out Belinda and sucking coffee with Condi, he has been a busy heterosexual male, living up to his first name.

Perhaps he could replace Bev Oda as Minister in Charge of the Status Of Women, since Womens Equality is no longer included in the mandate. That would would be poetic justice it would make him Belinda's bitch.

But seriously though, will he get the knife in the back this Blogging Tory is predicting.?

If so that will spell the death of the last political link to the PC legacy in the party. And then Harper and the crew can get about carrying out their Reform Party agenda.

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Peter MacKay

Cougar


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I Smell Election

I maintain that there will be no Federal election before the Fall.

Some of the Sunday News Pundits on CTV QP agree with me.

What we all agree on is that there will be an election in 2007.

When is the question, but there is no doubt 2007 is going to be a Federal election year. The cat is out of the bag.

Watching QP from CTV Regina an ad popped up from the Conservative MP for Palliser, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

Not paid for by the Government nor the Conservative Party, but paid for by the Committe to Elect Dave Batters - Member of Parliament - Palliser

And it was identified as such, with the Campaign manager listed on the ad.
Just like a real Election ad.

Yep I smell election in the air.

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Election




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Edmonton Person Of The Year

So there I was in Hudson's on Whyte the very same watering hole where Rona Ambrose and Rahim Jaffer celebrated their election victories last year. And who should stare out at me from the newstand but Rona on the cover of SEE magazine, a local free weekly.

She made it as their Person of the Year for 2006

They included a tell tale photo of the Environment Minister touring her riding during the election in her new SUV. That says alot.

Which is why she is last years news. This year she will be gone from that portfolio quicker than you can say Global Warming.

And though she represents a suburban riding, she lives in Edmonton, in Old Strathcona in fact. Which is why she and her pal Jaffer hang out at trendy Whyte Avenue bars, allegedly before, during and after elections.

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Ambrose


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Minimum Wage Retort

The best way to identify those who are truly conservative and not the least bit progressive, but claim to be, is to see where they stand on minimum wage increases.

Mr. I Am A Liberal, Jason Cherniak sounds like the Fraser Institute in his attack on the NDP proposal to increase the minimum wage in Ontario. Say no to a $10 minimum wage

Yep he rolls out all their arguments; loss of jobs will ensue, businesses will close, blah, blah, same talking points the right wing uses. Which shows the Liberals real colours. Talk progressive but act regressive.

Now imagine his position on a National Social Wage/Living Wage. Why the same old canards would be hauled out. Despite the fact the Liberals off course say they favour a National Guarnteed Income.

What Cherniak and The Fraser boys forget is that wage increases means more money circulating in the economy. Those on minimum wages spend more on daily needs, including purchasing from local small businesses as well as large chain stores, investing their income directly into the economy. Moreso than those who get tax credits or tax breaks. In fact the argument of the right that Tax Breaks put money into the economy applies even moreso when it comes to minimum wage increases.

Why are Cherniak and the Liberalblogs still populating the Progressive Bloggers, well because actually it's their front group, the rest of the left is here just to give them cover.

Liberals Are NOT Progressives nor are they part of the Left. Jason proves it once again. Thanks Jason for clearing up any doubts anyone may have had.

Run from the Left, rule from the Right.

See:

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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