Ontario’s 25-cent wage hike leaves 1.2 million people poor

Ontario’s 25-cent wage hike leaves 1.2 million people poor

Ontario’s lowest-paid workers got a 25-cent an hour raise Feb. 1, but critics say the tiny pay hike still leaves 1.2 million people – including many immigrants — earning poverty wages of less than $10.00 an hour. Over an eight-hour shift, the new 3.2% pay increase is barely enough to cover the cost of a cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, Ontario’s MPPs recently voted themselves a $22,000 annual pay hike and figures show the annual pay for Canada’s top 100 CEO rose by an average of $2,525,180 in 2005. “The highest-paid CEO makes as much as 4,696 people working a full year at the minimum wage,” notes Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He points that the average pay of Canada’s 100 top-paid CEOs matched the average Canadian minimum wage worker’s annual earnings by 40 minutes after noon on New Year’s Day.

Mackenzie says that immigrants – particularly visible minorities – are more likely to be stuck in low-paying jobs. He cites statistics showing 27.4% of recent full-time working immigrants who’ve been in Canada five years or less make less than $10 an hour. Among visible minorities, 31.1% of recent immigrants make less than $10 an hour.

“It’s simply unacceptable that full-time workers earning minimum wage are struggling below the poverty line in a rich province like Ontario,” says John Cartwright, President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.

The council has launched a campaign to push for passage of legislation to boost the Ontario minimum wage to $10. (Visit www.amillionreasons.ca for more details).

Ramona Manners, 49, a Toronto single mother, has been forced to take on minimum wage jobs after losing her $12 an hour manufacturing job in 1990 due to downsizing.

“My rent is $1,045 and I find it impossible to make ends meet,” says Manners. “Everything I have to pay for goes up in price more than my pay increases.”

NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, who sponsored the Ontario bill designed to boost minimum wage, is frustrated the measure hasn’t received the support of Premier Dalton McGuinty.

“A $10 minimum wage is long overdue,” says DiNovo. ‘It’s disgraceful that a family can have two full-time workers earning today’s minimum wage, and still find themselves trapped under the poverty line, unable to meet their basic needs.”