Minimum wage increase met with criticism from multiple angles

“Since January 2020, the general CPI (Consumer Price Index), to which the minimum wage is tied, has gone up by 22%. Food purchased from stores have gone up by 31%, and rent by 33%, so they’re going around one and a half times higher than the general inflation. That’s why when we tied the minimum wage to general inflation, we’ll always be behind in those high inflation periods,” said Iglika Ivanova, BC Policy Solutions Co-Executive Director and the author of the report.

The report says the living wage in Prince George is $23.15 an hour, so the current minimum wage is close to $5 below that. It adds 18% of all Prince George employees earn less than this living wage, and 9% of employees are 15-years-old or older, so it isn’t just a matter of students still living with their parents.

“We discount concerns about low wage work because we think it’s teenagers living at home. It is not teenagers living at home, it is older workers to a large extent,” Ivanova said.

The minimum wage increase has also brought some concern from MLA Kiel Giddens, the B.C. Conservative Party’s Labour Critic, who says it could cause more harm than good.

“I support higher wages across the board, higher pay cheques for British Columbians, but we have to remember that this is on the backs of small businesses. Right now, unemployment has actually doubled in the last four years, and youth unemployment is actually the highest it’s been in decades. We do need to think about how we’re treating small business, and the overall landscape is getting more challenging as they get more squeezed,” Giddens said.

“We’ve lost over 40,000 jobs this year already, and there are significant challenges, cracks, in our economy. We need to look after the health of our businesses to make sure that they can actually hire and help our employees thrive,” Giddens continued.

Ivanova says she is sympathetic to small businesses who have faced increased costs, but says everyone has faced increased costs, so she says workers shouldn’t be expected to shoulder these challenges when it’s a universal issue.

“Gas prices are bad for small business, right? But we just pay whatever’s at the pump. We are not trying to argue with the gas station to lower prices because it’s bad for small business. But we try to argue for lower wages because it’s bad for small business,” Ivanova said.

“It’s interesting to reflect on why is it that we can’t push back on rent or gas, but we feel like we can push back on wages and ask workers who are facing the same increases to be the ones who absorb the cost, instead of sharing the cost more evenly between business and workers,” she continued.

At $18.25 an hour, B.C. has the highest minimum wage among all provinces, and third highest when you include territories, as Nunavut and Yukon are higher at $19.75 $18.51 respectively.

by Tommy Osborne

Minimum wage increase met with criticism from multiple angles

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