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Basic Wages

I stopped to watch a group of people picking strawberries the other day and was intrigued by the speed at which these people were moving. They appeared to be Hispanic, but whether they were local people or migrant workers, I could not tell.
I stopped to watch a group of people picking strawberries the other day and was intrigued by the speed at which these people were moving. They appeared to be Hispanic, but whether they were local people or migrant workers, I could not tell. The pickers had their hands flying so fast the berries probably did not know what happened as they found themselves plucked from the plant and placed in boxes.

But the really fast work was being done by two fellows who were carrying the flats of berries from the field to the truck. They were actually running up and down the rows of berries carrying the full flats to the truck, returning with the empty cardboard boxes for the pickers. ‘Pick that berry, tote that box . . .’

This looked like a well-oiled machine and I expect they were picking berries on a piece-work basis. Florida has no minimum wage and the basic wage of $6.15 would hardly have driven these people to such production efforts. What percentage of the cost of a quart / litre box of strawberries was allotted for harvesting the berries, I have no idea, but it is likely a small part of the overall cost to the consumer.

It looked like hard work and the annualized earnings for such labour would hardly exceed the poverty level set by Ontarians. At least in Ontario there is a minimum wage of $7.45, unless one is a student, works only limited hours or toils serving booze. Or one is perhaps a migrant farm worker. Imagine what a basic wage earner in Florida would think if they got a raise to the Ontario level! The clerks in the stores would be singing in the aisles!

If you worked a full year on minimum you would gross about $15,500 but if you could get that 4.5% the police recently received, you could up your wages to $16,200 or another $700 a year. Think how a minimum wage worker would feel about getting a $3,000 dollar a year raise!

This is not to disparage the generous wage increases received by our city workers, but to show the difference between what an officer gets with a wage increase and what somebody doing work such as picking strawberries or clerking in a store would get. There is a whopping $2,300 dollar difference. No doubt there is good justification for this as the officers have an important part to play in securing and maintaining our law and order whereas the other folk are just part of a chain of people who put food on our tables and clothes on our backs.

The level of training and education for our civil servants goes far beyond what most minimum wage workers need and this is reflected in their base wage when they start their career. Each year as they progress through the system they get percentage wage increases. Indeed even the minimum wage earner gets increases once in a while at the whim of the government.

These minimum wage earners can of course get a second job to supplement that $700 increase and by working 70 hours a week, take another step up the economic ladder. Besides, we tell ourselves, once you get used to a lifestyle, the $3,000 the police officer gets equates with the $700 for the field worker.

The unfortunate thing is that percentage increases create an ever-widening gap between the bottom of the wage scale and the top of the wage scale. Our police officers are continually seeking wage parity with their counterparts in Toronto. But they never quite get there because their base scale was set lower in the past. In order to catch up completely they would need an adjustment on scale, not a percentage increase.

The same applies to other trades in the north. Besides, we are continually told, it is much cheaper to live in the north than in Toronto. Right.

The police aside, a similar problem exists not only at City Hall but with all union (or association) settlements that are based on a straight percentage. Eventually the higher paid workers creep away from the beginning or lower skilled workers. The only way for a worker to close the gap is to advance from one job level to another, which is not a bad thing. Providing there are openings for you if you acquire those skills and you are satisfied to wait until old Joe retires and you get his job.

Non-unionized people can climb the money ladder by upgrading skills, working extra hours or ultimately, becoming owners of their own businesses. As entrepreneurs they can then employ minimum wage workers to turn profits on sales or services. It is the Great American Dream at its best.

Back to the strawberry pickers, can they improve their skills and advance up the wage scale? Perhaps, but do we, as a society – that is those of us who are not at the bottom of the wage scale - want them to? We need all those minimum wage earners so we can afford strawberries, cheap clothes and electronics. Whatever is going to happen to us when these migrant and minimum wage workers and their offspring get educated? They might even bond together and form unions to get a better wage or refuse to work at ‘menial’ jobs and reduced hours! Which brings me, inevitably it seems, to Wally Mart.

The news in Florida is closely following the struggle to unionize Wal-Mart in Quebec. While everyone (admit it) shops at Wal-Mart, not everyone is happy about the wages, working conditions and purchasing policies at the giant merchandiser. World-wide, Wal-Mart’s purchasing techniques are coming under more and more scrutiny as they persist in buying their goods at ever lower prices. Not only are they driving the prices down, they are driving the quality down, not only of their goods, but of their competitors as well.

Wally seems to have an answer – if you don’t like working for our wages or buying our goods, go elsewhere. If you want to unionize, we’ll close the store and customers can shop at Target or Zellers and you will be out of work and the city will lose property taxes. If a company in China goes bankrupt trying to meet Wal-Mart price quotas, too bad for the owners and their workers.

What would happen if these giant merchandisers had to face that annual 4.5% wage increase the police received? Could it be the seed of an inflation-driven depression? Do we, as a society, want that to happen? Somebody had better get to those judges in Quebec and stop the persecution of Wally Mart. Those of us at the middle and above on the ladder can not afford to have the people at the bottom of the economic scale close that gap. We rely on that cheap labour to give us our comfortable lifestyle.

Of course if you get too many poorly paid people watching the rich and famous, they can band together and revolt to get a bigger slice of the pie and this time it may not be the heads of Kings, Queens and Tsars that greet the chopping block. Just look at those poor NHL players and owners! But then, you really didn’t miss the hockey that much, did you (admit it)?

Perhaps we need a period of economic adjustment to let the minimum wage earners catch up a little more. Something like a luxury tax or salary cap on people pulling in the big dollars. Nothing so onerous that it would stifle initiative and discourage anyone for trying to make that first million, but the second million could be taxed right back into the public coffers.

Whoops, there goes the Lexus.

Forget it – pass the strawberries, dear.




Bill Walton

About the Author: Bill Walton

Retired from City of North Bay in 2000. Writer, poet, columnist
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