The minimum wage in Quebec therefore passed, this Monday 1er May, Labor Solidarity Day, at $15.25 an hour. It was introduced by welcoming this “historic increase” of $1, emphasizing that it will help the 298,900 Quebec workers (55% of whom are women workers) who earn the minimum wage to compensate for the increase in the cost of life.
The Minister of Labour, Jean Boulet, abundantly underlined the generosity of his government, in a context where — of course — it is essential to respect the “capacity to pay of companies”. An element that could hardly have been omitted, given the abundance of voices to bring this concern.
Whenever it comes to the working conditions of low wage earners, and the increase in the minimum wage in particular, there is something frustrating in the unfolding of the headlines which insist above all on the impact of these measures on businesses. Companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, are fragile, it is said. They are still struggling to recover from the pandemic, they have already received an increase in the Pension Plan.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, in the first place, did not miss the opportunity to point out that this jump in the minimum wage represented, according to data from the Ministry of Labour, a cost of just over 460 million dollars for business. $2,400 more per year for each worker earning minimum wage, to which must be added the salary increases that will have to be granted to employees who earn a little more than minimum wage.
Exposed in this way, we end up forgetting the essential, namely that the minimum wage in Quebec—and we will repeat it as often as necessary—does not allow us to live, even at $15.25 an hour.
The silence of company representatives on the working conditions of employees is significant. Their concerns focus on the viability of businesses; do not clip the wings of entrepreneurs, we will shoot ourselves in the foot in the long run, etc. Certainly, but we could very well say that while demanding to be supported in order to offer decent working and living conditions to workers at the bottom of the ladder.
Entrepreneurs enjoy better social recognition than low earners. It’s obvious: we cherish small businesses, especially those that correspond to the romantic image of local businesses contributing to their community by creating jobs. Why not use this enviable posture to stand in solidarity with the reality of the “working poor” and demand measures aimed at eradicating this reality? Alas, no word on what it represents, in flesh and blood, to live with the minimum wage, in Quebec, in 2023.
Precisely, on Wednesday, the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS) published its annual report on “viable income”. We learned that now, in Quebec, to live with dignity and out of poverty, a person must earn between $27,047 and $37,822 per year, depending on the region. For a household made up of two adults and two children (with access to a CPE), you must earn at least $71,161 per year. This represents an increase of $6,129 (9.4%) over last year.
The IRIS report also points out that inflation has hit the bottom 20% hardest, because the income needed to meet certain basic needs has risen faster than inflation. It has also been shown unequivocally that the most recent increase in the minimum wage does not make it possible to make up for the increase in certain essential expenses that weigh more heavily on low earners—housing and transportation, in particular.
The government justifies setting the minimum wage at $15.25 by arguing in particular that this allows a person working 40 hours a week all year round to meet their basic needs — but relying on the Market Basket Measure (MPC). This index is very different from the “viable income” proposed by the IRIS, which establishes the amount necessary to maintain a minimally comfortable standard of living. However, a salary of $15.25 an hour, for a single person living in Montreal, only earns 78% of this viable income.
Statistics aside, it is significant to note that public policies are based on the idea that it is acceptable, even desirable, within a just and democratic society to maintain a whole category of workers in a of strict survival. This says something about us, about the idea we have of our responsibility in relation to those who are trying to get out of poverty.
We constantly insist that it is by working that we get out of poverty; This is reflected in the (deliberately) starving amount allocated to people on social assistance, as well as in the contempt shown for all forms of benefits aimed at helping people in poverty get back on their feet. Except that the dice are loaded, because in fact, work is far from being a way of salvation for those who earn minimum wage.
Already in 2016, we saw campaigns calling for a minimum wage of $15. That was seven years ago, before the pandemic, before the inflationary surge, before the most recent surge in housing prices in all regions of Quebec. The adoption of this hourly rate appears today as a dark joke. If we were serious in our desire to offer a viable income to all employees, we should rather aim for a minimum wage of around $20 an hour.
We have the means to do it. Just take the side of dignity.
Columnist specializing in environmental justice issues, Aurélie Lanctôt is a doctoral candidate in law at McGill University.