The North Bay and District Labour Council reacted fondly to the news that Premier Kathleen Wynne announced a plan to increase the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour by January of 2019.
“It’s a pretty good day for workers across Ontario, and I’m particularly thankful for all the hard work our team has accomplished in the two years since we started educating, organizing, and mobilizing for labour reform,” says Henri Giroux, North Bay and District labour Council in a release.
The increase would be phased in over the next 18 months, moving up to $14 an hour in January of 2018, and then to $15 the following year.
“We are pleased with the announcement of an 18 month transition to a $15 minimum wage, because precarious, part-time, and low-wage earners are working on the edge,” says Giroux.
“It’s all about economic fairness and economic justice, and when we help low earners with an opportunity to live a more dignifying life—donate to charity, save for college, buy birthday presents—we not only grow our economy, we foster a safer community with greater vitality."
Giroux says the minimum wage increase is certainly a positive but he believes the Ontario government needs to follow through with a complete modernization of the labour laws in Ontario.
“Joining a union is the fairest way out of poverty and the surest way to economic prosperity,” he added in the release.
“Unionized workers enjoy equal pay for equal work, time off to care for sick family, and negotiated holiday time to enjoy life.
“Unions raise the standards for everyone by allowing for fairer wealth distribution. Unions help generations of families make remarkable investments in communities, steadily, surely, and fairly. Unions help families invest in the lives of their children, and their children’s children, by enabling post-secondary education and quality training—all things necessary to earn enough stability to buy residential properties and pay important property taxes. The earning, saving, and investing power of working people is the engine of the economy.
“Having those part-time workers could earn equal pay as compared to their full-time counterparts and that laws may force employers to use fairer scheduling practices, these things are steps in the right direction,” continued Giroux.
“Employers have been exploiting part-timers for decades and it’s time we make life fairer for everyone, not just for the profits of corporations.”
Ontario will join Alberta as the only other province to pass a $15 per hour minimum wage, which was passed in September of 2016 and will be phased in by October of 2018.
