Emily Hoey is spending her weekend in Montreal. She works in Simcoe, Ontario, where she serves lager for the Charlotteville Brewing Company: “Before, I didn’t have enough money to enjoy Montreal. Getting paid with a living wage allows me to do this kind of thing. “
Since his company joined the Living Wage Network, he has seen his salary grow by $ 3 per hour to Canadian $ 17 (€ 12.61), or $ 2,700 gross (€ 2,000) per month: “Now I can take courses at the university and spend more in my city”, she rejoices.
Cover basic expenses
That living wage is calculated by Craig Pickthorne’s team at the Ontario Living Wage Network. Its amount allows you to cover basic expenses: rent, food, transport, clothing, but also free time.
It varies greatly by city. In Toronto, the rich capital of Ontario, where housing is very expensive, it amounts to $ 22.08 per hour (€ 16.37). Much more than in Kingston, much less opulent, where it costs only $ 17.75 (€ 13.16). “With a minimum wage, a family in Toronto can barely survive,” is indignant.
A way to stand out
The network was created in the mid-2000s, initially to combat child poverty. “Poverty can affect all types of families. Faced with this, the minimum wage is a tool of the pastCount Craig Pickthorne. It was supposed to be a standard for young people entering the job market. But in reality, many people with minimum wages already have families. And the bills to pay. “
Companies wishing to be certified as “decent” must prove to the institution that they pay at least the fixed salary. Being certified costs anywhere from 50 to 1,000 Canadian dollars (37 to 741 €) per year, depending on the type and size of the company.
Bring stability to employees
For Melanie Doerksen, head of the Charlotteville Brewing Company, moving to a living wage was the best thing to do: “We were already paying a little above the minimum wage. And it will increase in November. Let’s celebrate! “, he exclaims with a laugh.
Brandy Leary, artistic director of the Anandnam dance company, has guaranteed her employees, since the beginning of the Covid-19 emergency, the decent salary set by the NGO: “It has brought stability to our employees, who have been hit hard by the cessation of the shows. “
A marketing tool
For Gilles Grenier, a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Ottawa, certification is above all a corporate marketing tool. “They buy the message that comes with certification, that of proving that they are responsible. It is not just generosity. ”
In any case, Melanie Doerksen sees it as a good way to keep her staff, when more than a million jobs are vacant in Canada, for an active population of 20 million: “Our employees all want to be with us now. And it also brings customers, who support the process. ”
The same observation with David Neinstein, owner of a restaurant in Toronto, where the transition to a living wage last May was not without difficulty. “For us, being certified represented a 15% increase in the salaries of our employees, he points out. And to compensate, we had to raise the prices of our menus at least as much. Some customers said they thought it was a little expensive, but … that’s the game! Others support us. ”
Minimum wage less and less relevant
Since the start of the pandemic, the number of companies that have joined the association has tripled in Ontario to over 500. Is it enough to listen to the members of the provincial government? “We have very few contacts with them, they have little knowledge of people’s real standard of living”, dear Craig Pickthorne. By email, the government indicates that it will increase the inflation-linked minimum wage each year. One approach “fair and balanced” for businesses and their employees, he writes.
But in the eyes of the economist Gilles Grenier, “The minimum wage is less and less relevant” in this context where the balance of power between employers and employees has been overturned.
In this month of November, the calculation of the “Living Wage”, by city, will be revalued upwards, given inflation (6.9% in October). “Honestly, I don’t know what to expect.by David Neinstein. But what I do know is that we won’t be back. “
———
What is “fair compensation”?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides in its article 23 what “Every person who works has the right to a just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and integrated, if necessary, by any other means of social protection”.
For the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2434, ” the Fair pay it is the legitimate fruit of work. Refusing or refusing it can constitute a grave injustice (cf.Lv 19:13; Deut 24: 14-15; Jas 5: 4). To evaluate a fair remuneration it is necessary to take into account both the needs and the contributions of each one “.
