CLASS WAR IN ALBERTA
Opinion: Two-tier minimum wage will cost older workers their jobs
Alexander Shevalier, president of the Calgary and District Labour Council, says the new two-tier minimum wage will likely cost older workers their jobs.
Premier Jason Kenney’s cavalier approach to the minimum wage has led to one of Bill 2’s most regressive changes in a piece of legislation filled with them.
By lowering the minimum wage to $13 from $15 for an estimated 35,000 workers aged 13-17 — for the first 28 hours per week when school is in session and for all hours worked during the summer — the UCP has kept one of its most controversial election promises while facilitating the increased exploitation of young workers for the sake of higher private profits.
This isn’t the first time a conservative government has implemented an age-based minimum wage differential in Alberta. We had one in the 1990s, called a “training wage,” that allowed employers to pay 50 cents less per hour to those under 18.
The Klein government, however, nixed its unequal youth wage in 1998.
“One, we know that employees, particularly young people, are far more job-ready than they’ve ever been before,” then labour minister Murray Smith told the legislature.
“Secondly, we had evidence where that training wage was being abused by employers, abused to the point where it had to be eliminated. We took that action.”
A two-tiered, unequal youth wage system, as some have speculated it might do in Alberta since Bill 2 was tabled, encourages discriminatory hiring and firing practices. Known as the “substitution effect,” jurisdictions with differential minimum wages have experienced as much.
Australia’s age-tiered wage regime led to “learn or churn” conditions that often result in lower hours for aging workers, or outright replacement. One McDonald’s employee in Queensland called the gradual phase-out of older workers an “unspoken rule.”
While Australia’s youth wages are more extreme at the margins — a 14-year-old worker could make as much as 50 per cent less than their adult colleagues, with incremental wage increases every year until they reach 21 — the incentive to reduce the hours of older workers still exists.
“They use casual employment and junior rates to basically cycle workers off under the apprehension that those workers are going to get more hours as they get more skills in the workplace,” one fast food union rep in Australia said.
Wage differentials in Denmark saw unemployment levels rise by upwards of 33 per cent when workers reached the standard adult wage-earning age. The Danish study also found that hiring slowdowns occur for workers in the months approaching their 18th birthday.
While employment levels declined by a third for Danish workers who’ve turned 18 years old, those levels didn’t start to recover until they reached their 20s. This employment gap could lead to what researchers call a “scarring effect” on those young workers’ career prospects later in life.
Ensuring all workers are paid a standardized minimum wage — preferably a living wage — is the easiest way to prevent employers from the discriminatory practices detailed above.
But young workers are easy targets. They aren’t of voting age, many of their workplaces aren’t unionized, and they are now forced onto even more precarious financial footing because this government believes their labour is less valuable than their adult colleagues’.
While there are legal protections against age discrimination covered by the Alberta Human Rights Act for workers over the age of 18, enforcement is often ineffective. It is unclear how instances of “learn or churn”-style discrimination might be handled in the Alberta context if they occur.
It is also difficult to imagine young, freshly churned workers pursuing costly civil litigation against discriminatory employers.
Considering the hike to $15 last year did not bankrupt the province’s service sector or result in recession-level job losses predicted by some, the UCP’s take-it-or-leave-it “$13 is better than $0” attitude is confusing.
Along with Bill 2’s other anti-labour provisions, it is plain to see that this is a government preparing for a longer fight against Alberta workers. Kenney should heed the advice of former minister Smith and scrap this two-tier minimum wage.
Alexander Shevalier is the president of the Calgary and District Labour Council.
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