{"id":19667,"date":"2018-01-24T17:50:50","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T22:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19667"},"modified":"2018-01-24T17:50:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T22:50:50","slug":"labour-minister-defends-contentious-wage-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/labour-minister-defends-contentious-wage-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour Minister defends contentious wage increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ontario is in an election year, and the Government says the Province is \u201cdoing very well\u201d when it comes to prosperity. Economic growth is going well, they contend, unemployment numbers are low, and we\u2019re leading the G7 in growth.
\nBut, according to Kevin Flynn, Ontario\u2019s Minister of Labour, there has been a core group of people in recent years not sharing in the wealth; namely those living on minimum wage.
\nThe Minister of Labour spoke to The Auroran last week on the Province\u2019s controversial decision to raise the minimum wage, a move which has sparked significant backlash from employers large and small across the Province.
\nWhether it is a group of \u201crogue\u201d franchisees clawing back tips, hours and paid breaks or even downsizing and dismissals, heat is being felt across all sectors, but the Minister is defiant in his government\u2019s decision to bring in a \u201cliving wage.\u201d
\n\u201cIn hindsight we probably should have done it earlier,\u201d said Mr. Flynn.
\nIn 2011, Ontario put in a process he said \u201cdepoliticized\u201d the formula for calculating minimum wage, pegging it at the rate of inflation but the economic fallout in the last few years of the previous decade led to some \u201creticence.\u201d
\n\u201cThere was a feeling that the economic rebound we experienced in Ontario and throughout Canada, the States and the world was still a bit fragile and it wasn\u2019t the time to be making any big economic moves,\u201d he says. \u201cWe just continued to invest in infrastructure and the economy and thought that would be enough to carry us through.\u201d
\nDuring that time, however, he says it became clear that the idea a minimum wage was simply a \u201cstudent wage\u201d was more of a myth than a reality.
\n\u201cWe found almost a third of the people in Ontario earn a wage less than $15 an hour,\u201d says Flynn. \u201cOut of those third, easily half of them \u2013 and I think even approaching 60 per cent of them \u2013 are between the ages of 25 and 64. This isn\u2019t the \u2018teenager still in school making a bit of money for university\u2019 wage, all of a sudden this is now a family wage.\u201d
\nThe boost to minimum wage came after a series of studies and outreach sessions led by two people who brought to the table an employee perspective and an employer\u2019s point of view. Their review process went across the Province, he says, holding consultations over two years with business leader, organized labour and poverty groups. These findings ultimately led to how the work force could be changed — and indeed how the workforce had changed since the last time a study such as this was carried out in the 1990s.
\n\u201cThey realised there had been a huge rise in temporary work, a huge rise in part-time work and [they decided] the world of work had changed so much they needed to make some recommendations that ensured the regulations were still valid in 2018,\u201d says Flynn. \u201cWe looked at things like the use of temporary agencies, how they proliferated so people were essentially working full time, but were in temporary full-time positions for what could be years. We knew this simply wasn\u2019t right for the security of those folks, so we made some changes around temporary healthy agencies.
\n\u201cThere were a lot of people living so close to the edge that they were afraid to take the day off work because they couldn\u2019t afford to lose that day\u2019s pay. If their child was sick, they would send their child into school and they would still come into work. We realised for years now personal emergency leave applied to companies when you had over 50 employees, realising in today\u2019s environment that that should apply to all Ontarians. You shouldn\u2019t have to have one set of people living by one rule and another that didn\u2019t have the same right.\u201d
\nPaid sick leave was another component brought into the conversation, including findings that when people living in abusive situations, primarily women, says the Minister, have to make a change to get out of that situation they should be protected during that period of time.
\n\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t be thinking that if I do get my kid or myself out of that dangerous situation I might put my job at risk,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of that did get lost in the debate that erupted over minimum wage.\u201d
\nYet, that debate still rages on.
\nMany of these issues, but minimum wage to a lesser extent, were covered at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday morning and there has been considerable exposure paid to certain Tim Hortons franchises and their response to the minimum wage hike.
\nDubbed \u201crogue operators\u201d by their parent company, the Minister says he understands their \u201cbeef\u201d with the policy but it is a \u201cbeef\u201d which shouldn\u2019t be taken out on their employees.
\n\u201cIt seems counterintuitive to me,\u201d he says. \u201cAny business model I have ever seen you\u2019d want to have happy employees and make sure your employees were well looked after. It was on the front page of Forbes this month that treat your employees well you will be more profitable and more productive. When you look at other businesses, the vast majority of businesses have adapted to this quite well. They probably would have preferred we hadn\u2019t done it in the long run, but they understand. Maybe business people preferred we hadn\u2019t done it, but I think as people, as individuals, as family members, they understand there was a need to do it to bring everybody along.
\n\u201cWe are doing a lot of education, a lot of outreach. We are actually funding some of these organizations so they can go out and talk to their own members. Average earnings are good in the Province of Ontario and the part I think a lot of people miss is you\u2019ve got almost a third of the population now will be earning more money and earning money at a level that they are going to inject funds, their paycheques, back into the community very, very quickly. If you\u2019re earning $14 or $15 level and trying to get by, you would be very surprised if you even had a savings account but you\u2019re not investing this money but putting it back into the main streets, the BIAs, into the mom and pop businesses in your local area very quickly. You\u2019re going into supermarkets, into the drug stores, you\u2019re buying diapers, paying the landlord. Very ordinary purchases that are very good for the economy.
\n\u201cI think roughly half of our GDP in Ontario is generated from household purchases. There are going to be some very good, positive economic spin-offs as a result of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

HAVE YOUR SAY \u2013 As an employer or employee, what are your thoughts surrounding the minimum wage increase and the Minister\u2019s perspective? Sound off by sending your thoughts to letters@auroran.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ontario is in an election year, and the Government says the Province is \u201cdoing very well\u201d when it comes to prosperity. Economic growth is going well, they contend, unemployment numbers are low, and we\u2019re leading the G7 in growth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-57d","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 08:21:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}