Living Wage a no go for now
Posted Jan 5, 2010 03:08:01 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Living Wage idea lives on in limbo at Regional Council.
This morning the Community Services Committee voted 8-7 in favour of deferring any decision on implementing a Living Wage program until after the next council is elected this Fall.
The motion to defer was moved by Regional Chair, Ken Seiling, who said it was the next council which will have to implement and pay for the plan, and they should be allowed to make that decision for themselves.
The Living Wage program, as proposed by Regional staff, would pay all the Region’s full-time, non-student employees a minimum of $13.62/hr., and give preference in awarding tenders to contractors who do the same.
Contractors would not be forced to pay such a rate.
The province’s minimum wage will rise to $10.25/hr. on March 31.
Some councillors strongly objected to the idea of putting off the vote.
Some also used their comment time to object to the Living Wage idea itself, saying the current state of the economy isn’t right for increasing labour costs, or increasing minimum wage and fighting poverty in general is best done by the province.
Cheryl Ives from Opportunities Waterloo Region, the group that first proposed the Living Wage idea, says she’s disappointed council didn’t say yes to the plan today, but happy that it’s not been completely defeated.
Ives says councillors seemed to have missed the point that this will not be a huge cost increase to the Region.
She says it’s too bad the staff report didn’t have an exact dollar value projection, but believes a more costly option of forcing contractors to pay the Living Wage would have meant an extra $800,000 cost to the Region, so the proposed plan should be far less than that.
She says it would only effect 200 employees; it would be an option for contractors, not a requirement; and cities like Boston and San Francisco saw a 1% cost increase with their living wage.
