<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s announcement to raise the minimum wage in Ontario should be considered a victory for the labour movement, says a Brock University professor.<\/p>\n
Simon Black, Assistant Professor in Brock\u2019s Centre for Labour Studies, calls the announcement by Premier Kathleen Wynne to raise minimum wage to $15 by 2019 a \u201chuge victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the minimum wage is poverty wage,\u201d Black says. \u201cWe can\u2019t have people working upwards of 40 hours a week and then at the end of the year they\u2019re still below that poverty line cutoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the announced plan, the legal minimum hourly wage will increase from the current $11.40 to $11.60 in October, then to $14 on Jan. 1, 2018, and to $15 one year later. The plan also includes additional benefits such as increased vacation time and equal pay for part-time workers doing the same job as full-time staff.<\/p>\n
That $15 per hour threshold was something the labour movement has been fighting hard for, says Black, who was part of the international \u201c$15 and Fairness\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (the increases) are great, but they shouldn\u2019t be seen as a gift bestowed upon low-wage workers by the Liberal government. This is the product of a social movement, a product of organizing and mobilizing. This didn\u2019t just materialize out of thin air,\u201d Black says.<\/p>\n
To criticism that the increased wages will hurt small businesses, Black says it will all balance out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will give minimum-wage workers more money in their pockets to buy the things they need, which will contribute to growing the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday\u2019s announcement to raise the minimum wage in Ontario should be considered a victory for the labour movement, says a Brock University professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":35670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,4,38],"tags":[110,3856],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}