Left-wing activists lobby for a $15 minimum wage in Ontario.

In mid-September of this year, Alberta—under the premiership of Rachel Notley (New Democratic Party)—became the first province of Canada to pass a bill mandating a $15 minimum wage. Boosted by this success, many progressive groups across the country are now calling for the same law in their own provinces. $15 and Fairness, an organization based in Ontario, is currently campaigning to improve working conditions and raise the minimum wage in the province.

I got the opportunity to interview Alia Karim, a graduate student at York University and a leader with the York University Fight for $15 and Fairness Chapter, and Justin Kong, a graduate student at U of T, a member of the Workers’ Action Centre and part of the Fight for $15 and Fairness.

Innis Herald (IH): In a nutshell, what is your organization trying to accomplish?

Alia Karim (AK): Our campaign is directly putting pressure on the government to sign legislation to raise the provincial minimum wage to $15/hour (it is now $11.40) and also to enforce basic protections that workers need, for example, 7 paid sick days, annual vacation time, make it easier to sign a first collective agreement, everyone to be included in the minimum wage (it currently excludes youth under 18 years old, servers, and seasonal agricultural workers), etc (full demands are on 15andfairness.org). We are building awareness of this campaign by reaching out to unions and community groups, and also by petitioning on the street—at York University where I organize a chapter, for example, we’ve collected over 3000 signatures from the community. I believe this is catching on with York students because the majority of students work part-time, or have previously worked in minimum wage jobs that pay less than $15/hour. Many students are aware that the future of youth is very bleak because the labour market is not doing well, there are mostly part-time, contract, and temporary jobs available upon graduation. How are we supposed to pay our student debt and save for the future when we’re working for less than $15/hour? It’s impossible.

But the campaign goes far beyond demanding a raise in minimum wage and basic protections. We’re building a labour-community coalition to address a range of concerns about the labour market. To me, it’s also about pushing back against a harsh economic climate for youth and working families. For example, we know that income inequality is at an all-time high in Canada. The top 100 CEOs earn a salary 184 times that of the average worker working full-time hours. To me, this campaign expresses workers’ refusal to accept a precarious labour market, which is largely exacerbating income inequality and exploitation of working people.

Justin Kong (JK): Fight for 15 and Fairness is a province wide coalition that is demanding a 15 dollar minimum wage and fair labour laws that actually effectively protect workers (paid sick days, no discriminatory exemptions and many more (see: http://15andfairness.org/demands/) in the increasingly precarious work climate of today’s Ontario.

IH: Why are you calling for a $15 minimum wage specifically?

AK: We’re calling on $15/hour because this is building on the momentum of the Fight for $15 in the United States. Hundreds of municipalities in the US have signed legislation for increases to $15, or close to that number, including cities like L.A., New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, etc. Here in Canada, the NDP government in Alberta agreed to raise their minimum wage to $15/hour by 2018, so we know that it’s possible in Canada too. $15 is a necessary increase but it’s not a huge “jump”—we know that the economy can adjust to this wage increase. We also know that in cities like Toronto the “living wage” is at least $18, so if workers can bargain for even larger increases that’s great and we encourage it, but $15 creates a united movement in North America, and it is a realistic step to raise the floor for millions of workers in Ontario. The $0.15 increase in Ontario this year was due to pressure by past campaigns to raise the minimum wage, so we need to keep the pressure on.

JK: A $15 minimum wage would mean that those who work for minimum wage would be above the poverty line. It would mean that families and people would live far less precariously than they do right now, that they would be able to afford rising housing and living expenses that many working people and family are confronting today in Ontario. A $15 minimum wage is fair and achievable. People shouldn’t be working and still be living in dire poverty.

IH: How are you achieving your goals?

AK: We do a range of activities and outreach. Chapters of the campaign do regular petitioning to collect signatures. This is one of the best ways to engage working people and to get them involved in the campaign. We lobby to MPPs, we present to unions, community and faith groups, we host town halls and we do creative campaigning (for example, we have a faith leaders statement that connects them to the campaign, we joined the Pride march last summer in Toronto, we’re doing carolling this winter with songs about raising the minimum wage, etc.).

JK: We are achieving our goal through building up community awareness and support for this issue. By doing so, we demonstrate to the government how pressing this issue is and urge them to take action on this matter. As of now we have collected tens of thousands of signatures and have organizing teams all across Ontario and with the support of many faith leaders and health practitioners (who respectively see the issue of addressing precarious as an issue of morality and public health). It is especially important now given the ongoing Changing Workplace Review being conducted, which represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for residents in Ontario to affect the labour laws that govern work.

IH: What would you say to people who claim that a $15 minimum wage would hurt the economy?

AK:There are many myths about how raising the minimum wage would lead to an economic downturn. I encourage people to look at Seattle because they’ve made increases in the minimum wage every year and it hasn’t led to mass unemployment or a huge increase in living costs, like many people believe it will. What we need to understand is that working people need purchasing power to put their local dollars back into the economy, which actually creates more jobs. So it’s no surprise that in Seattle they’ve actually seen an increase in job growth. In addition, many people believe that businesses will raise the prices of their commodities, but when you look at what these businesses spend on labour costs, it actually comes to a small percentage of their total spending, sometimes less than 10%. So we know that rich corporations like Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocer (that had adjusted net earnings of $338-million in 2015) can definitely afford to give their workers higher wages and paid sick days.

JK: First, I would ask them to consider for whom in the economy? Who is the economy serving now? What we have seen in Canada and the U.S in the past few decades is a growing proportion of economic gains being channeled towards the super rich, away from the working and middle class people who actually make the economy function. A $15 minimum wage and fair labour laws would significantly reverse this gargantuan and growing income inequality back toward working people. For those who argue it would mean less jobs because of supply and demand etc., I would recommend they move beyond narrow and dated neoclassical economic models and look at real empirical data of the effects of a minimum wage increase in a globalized economy. Studies have consistently shown, many of them done in states and cities in the U.S. that actually have raised the minimum wage to 15$, that raising the minimum has a statistically insignificant impact on the number of jobs and the availability of jobs. That’s because the way globalized production and industry works, the cost of labour in one area is only one small component of much larger economic factors (this is the same reason that rising minimum wage won’t skyrocket price of goods). A higher minimum wage also addresses a key issue in economy such as ours, which are struggling with, the issue of aggregate demand, by increasing consumption as people would have more money to spend.

IH: If you had a one-on-one meeting with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, what would you tell her?

AK: Kathleen Wynne needs to sign minimum wage legislation to increase the minimum wage and enhance workers’ protections. Instead she’s doing the complete opposite by pushing for privatization and selling off so many of our public assets. Working families in Ontario have seen essential social services cut for decades, while living costs go up (not to mention the cost of electricity shooting up this year) and wages are stagnant. With Alberta recently agreeing to raise the minimum wage to $15, there’s no excuse for Ontario!

JK: I’d tell the Premier that the people of Ontario are tired of economic injustice and a system that is rigged against workers. And we’re going to take those sentiments to the ballot box. Part of the lesson of recent political development in the U.S is that economic misery breeds all sorts of extremism. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen in Canada and part of that means fighting for economic justice for everyone in Ontario. It means laws and a system that work for regular people: working people, immigrants, young people, and families. That’s why the $15 and Fairness campaign is so important.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Image courtesy of Bella Rogal