Call for B.C. employers to pay minimum wage of $16.74 an hour
The Province
Suzanne Fournier
September 26, 2008

If B.C. employers were to pay a "living wage" that reflects what it really costs to raise a family, they would pay $16.74 an hour in Metro Vancouver and $16.39 an hour in Greater Victoria.

Researchers say the living wage would help thousands of children who live in poverty, despite having a parent with a full-time job.

They say employers would get a more stable workforce, less absenteeism and better productivity.

Those are among the conclusions of a study released yesterday by Tim Richards of the University of Victoria law faculty, health researcher Marcy Cohen, British living wage campaigner Deborah Littman and Seth Klein of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

"For the last five years running, StatsCan found B.C. has had the highest child-poverty rate in all of Canada and half of B.C.'s poor children live in a family where at least one person has a fulltime job," said Adrienne Montani, a former Vancouver School Board chairwoman who now speaks for the First Call B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

Klein said the researchers did what is called a "market basket" analysis calculating what it costs a family with two parents and two kids aged four and seven to pay for basics like shelter, food, transportation and childcare.

… North Vancouver single mother Erna Calingasan said the 2004 privatization of her job cut her wages in half, so she now works 12 hours a day, seven days a week at two jobs, one at Cedarview Lodge and the other at WalMart.

"I am physically and mentally exhausted and I have no time for myself or my son," said Calingasan.

"Please, everyone, I need a living wage and B.C. workers deserve the dignity of a living wage."

After Victoria researchers pegged a living wage at $14.68 an hour in 2006, several businesses began to pay it….

Atira Women's Resource Society in Vancouver pays 230 employees a starting living wage of $17.92 increasing to $21 after two years.

"Full-time work shouldn't keep people in poverty and we determined it was better for us to pay employees what they needed to live on," said executive-director Janice Abbott.

Klein said he has met with about a dozen major B.C. employers "and no one has said the amount is too generous ... in fact, the living wage calculation comes to them as something like a revelation."

Littman says a living wage is paid by major U.K. hospitals, banks, police, universities and even the city of London, whose Tory Mayor Boris Johnson boasts the wage "is good for business and good for the London economy."