By Seth Klein and Adrienne Montani On February 11, British Columbians will enjoy a well-deserved new stat holiday. With the inaugural Family Day, Premier Christy Clark has made good on a promise made during her bid for the BC Liberal leadership. The winter stretch needed a new long weekend, and many will appreciate this new-found [...]
Entries Tagged as 'minimum wage'
Seeking a Real Families First Agenda this First BC Family Day
February 7th, 2013 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Tags: child poverty·children·living wage·minimum wage·poverty·welfare
Living Wage Policy: Why Municipal Governments should lead the way
October 25th, 2011 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
By Michael McCarthy Flynn and Seth Klein The Living Wage for Families Campaign, along with 54 organizations representing over 300,000 British Columbians, recently issued an Open Letter calling on all municipal election candidates to help low-income families in their cities by passing a Living Wage policy if they are elected (available here). Many families are [...]
More thoughts on BC’s new minimum wage
March 23rd, 2011 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
As some of you may have seen, Adrienne Montani (of First Call) and I had a piece in the Vancouver Sun earlier this week: a “memo” to the new Premier on what a “Families First” agenda should look like . (If you didn’t see it, you can find it here.) In it, we praised Cristy [...]
Tags: child poverty·minimum wage
When everything you ask for isn’t enough – BC business calls for more cuts to labour standards
February 24th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Economy, Employment & labour
Last November BC’s Labour Minister quietly announced his Ministry was conducting a review of employment standards and the minimum wage. There has been virtually no news coverage on this. That’s too bad because the results could be important for BC workers. The recommendations could offer a blueprint for BC’s new Liberal Premier to be chosen [...]
Raising the minimum wage: not if but how much and how fast
February 10th, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Transparency & accountability
While lone voices from the business sector still oppose a minimum wage increase (as in this article in The Province), the minimum wage debate in BC has now firmly shifted past the question of whether we should raise it or not. Virtually all leadership contenders for both the BC Liberals and the BC NDP have [...]
Tags: inequality·leadership race·minimum wage·poverty·poverty reduction
The problems with the textbook analysis of minimum wages
January 20th, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · 10 Comments · Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the sorry state of the BC minimum wage, stuck at $8 after nine years two months and still counting. Yes, it will likely increase very soon, now that almost all leadership candidates on both sides have expressed support for higher minimum wages, but one has got to ask [...]
Tags: BC·economics·employment standards review·leadership race·minimum wage
Which is more important, lower taxes or a higher minimum wage?
October 2nd, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 7 Comments · Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
BC Labour Minister Murray Coell apparently got taken to the woodshed this week after telling a forum at the Union of BC Municipalities that his government was considering raising the minimum wage. The next day he quickly called a press conference on the driveway of a Whistler hotel to “clarify” his remarks. He really just [...]
Tags: minimum wage
Poverty Reduction: Even Alberta?
September 27th, 2010 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Currently, six provinces have official poverty reduction strategies either in place or (in the case of Manitoba) in development. BC, despite having the highest poverty rates, remains stubbornly in the minority of provinces without a plan (along with Alberta, Saskatchewan and PEI). But now comes news earlier this month that an all-party committee of the [...]
Poverty reduction: What other provinces are doing
June 8th, 2010 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
BC has much to learn from other provinces when it comes to poverty reduction. Six provinces now have poverty reduction plans, although most are still fairly new, and therefore we don’t yet have data to tell us what kind of success they are meeting with, the exceptions being Quebec and Newfoundland. What their plans and [...]
Tax cuts don’t make up for BC’s low minimum wages
April 4th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 3 Comments · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Responding to news of Ontario’s latest minimum wage increase (to $10.25 per hour), BC’s labour minister Murray Coell held firm on his government’s commitment to leave BC’s $8 minimum wage unchanged. The Minister seems convinced that the tax cuts over the last decade were so beneficial to low wage workers in the province, that they [...]
Tags: minimum wage·poverty·tax cuts
