BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
The chair of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce says it would be bad for business owners if the minimum wage suddenly jumped to $10 an hour.
If low-income workers are going to be paid more, their wage hike needs to be phased in gradually, says John Bonin.
“Certainly, you need time for something like that to happen. Businesses have to compensate for it by maybe changing product costing or looking for ways to absorb some costs. You can’t do that overnight and dramatically,” he says.
“I think it would be a significant impact on our small businesses to do that (immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour).”
The debate surrounding the province’s minimum wage was sparked by a private member’s bill introduced by New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo.
The bill, which would immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, has passed two readings in the legislature. It still needs to go through committee hearings and pass a third and final reading before becoming law.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he favours phasing in a higher minimum wage over time.
Bonin says he understands why workers need higher wages, but he thinks there are other ways to help the poor.
“If you look at the current tax structure, you could probably be on unemployment or welfare and bring home the same amount of money or potentially even more.”
Ontario Federation of Labour president Wayne Samuelson is on a tour of the province promoting DiNovo’s bill, and he made a stop in Greater Sudbury Friday.
Paying people at least $10 an hour will not hurt businesses because it means the workers will have more money to spend, and stores will make more money, he says.
The province has raised the minimum wage from $6.85 to $8 an hour in three years, but that’s not good enough, he says.
There are one million people in Ontario who earn less that $10 an hour.
The Toronto Food Bank reports half of the people that use the food bank actually work somewhere for less than $10 an hour, he says.
“Surely to God in an economy such as ours, it’s in everybody’s interest to ensure when people work a 40 hour work week, they have enough money at the end of the month to pay their rent, feed their kids and provide for their families.”
Paying full-time workers $10 an hour just barely puts them over the poverty line, Samuelson says. His organization also wants the government to raise the minimum wage based on inflation after it is raised to $10 an hour.
Nickel Belt MPP Shelley Martel says a hike to the minimum wage is sorely needed because so many workers are living in poverty.
She’s received phone calls from people living in her riding who can’t get dental work or drugs because their minimum wage job doesn’t have health benefits, and they can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
Martel doesn’t think the Liberals are going to allow DiNovo’s bill to pass, but she hopes it will become a hot-button issue in the provincial election in October.
Like Samuelson, she says moving to a $10 an hour minimum wage will benefit business.
“People who work at the minimum wage spend all their money in the local economy,” she says. “They do not have money to be going on trips outside the country or sock away into RRSPs. It’s spend on groceries, clothing or maybe replacing the toaster.”
Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci says his government is committed to increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour, but not all at once.
“As the premier has outlined, the road to increasing the minimum wage probably lies somewhere between going to $10 an hour immediately or not going to $10 an hour, and we will be moving to that progressively as we have in the past.”
Minimum wage across Canada:
Alberta - $7
British Columbia - $8
Manitoba - $7.60
New Brunswick - $7
Northwest Territories - $8.25
Nova Scotia - $7.15
Nunavut - $8.50
Ontario - $8
PEI - $7.15
Quebec - $7.75
Saskatchewan - $7.55
Yukon – $8.25
